The Equal Protection Project, a Rhode Island non-profit organization, has brought 60 civil rights complaints to multiple educational institutions across the country, citing discrimination perpetuated in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion.
The organization filed a complaint against the state’s flagship public university, University of Rhode Island, on Dec. 11, 2024, citing discrimination in their scholarship offerings to marginalized students, according to their website.
“Our guiding principle is that there is no good form of racism,” William Jacobson, founder of the EPP and a professor at Cornell Law School, said. “The remedy for racism never is more racism. Increasingly, we bring those same principles to actions opposing sex-based discrimination.”
The university is now under federal investigation by the Department of Education as of January 6, for 35 scholarships on the basis of the organization’s civil rights complaint, according to Jacobson.
Scholarships mentioned in the complaint include the “Dr. Robert L. Carothers Student Leadership Endowment”, an annual scholarship for qualifying students of color and the “Minority Scholarship Endowment”, awarded annually to a minority student with financial need, according to the EPP website.
Legal challenges, such as those brought by the EPP, are most likely a direct response to the 2023 Supreme Court decision in The Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, according to Christopher Parker, associate professor of political science at URI.
“Any consideration of race during [college] admissions was deemed unconstitutional,” Parker said.
While this case was about race considerations in college admissions, Parker said that explicitly race based scholarships would most likely be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as well.
“I think with admissions that’s a little bit of a stronger argument because you can think of college admissions as a zero-sum game,” Parker said. “For scholarship programs targeted at certain groups that’s not necessarily zero-sum. You can argue that this isn’t necessarily taking away from other students; it’s just providing for marginalized and underrepresented groups.”
The Trump administration has started withholding funds from colleges on the basis of discrimination and revaluations of DEI policies, according to AP News.
“We do not set or have input into [the] Trump administration[s] policy,” Jacobson said. “But we welcome increased enforcement action.”
Harvard University is fighting back against the Trump Administrations demands to audit academic departments, students, faculty and staff, according to the Harvard Gazette.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message to Harvard’s community.
Harvard is one of a group of universities such as Columbia University and Brown University under threat of losing funding, according to AP News.
“Unfortunately many schools who received federal funding seem to think they can discriminate without meaningful repercussions so long as they promise not to do it again,” Jacobson said. “The Trump Administration, by imposing financial costs on universities that discriminate, is sending a much-needed message that non-discrimination is to be taken more seriously.”
Affirmative action and race-conscious policies were created in part to help mend the societal and economic impacts of legal segregation and to foster a diverse student body, according to Parker.
“The Supreme Court going back to the 1970s said that achieving a more diverse student body is a compelling interest of the state,” Parker said. “That is until 2023 with the Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard case.”
The Equal Protection Project wanted to emphasize the importance of the United States’ principles of equal opportunity, according to Jacobson.
“Do not get fooled by the now-fashionable notion of equity,” Jacobson said. “Which is a group-identity concept that measures justice based on group outcomes and uses discrimination to manipulate group results.”
Parker believes that these racial inequities towards students of color in education still exist today.
“There are all sorts of lasting effects [of racial inequality] in terms of generational wealth and if you look at schools who still have legacy admissions, because they are based on past generations, they are heavily tilted towards favoring white applicants. So I think it’s a little naive to think we are past the need for these considerations of racial inequality.”
The Equal Protection Project launched in February 2023, following a complaint one of Jacobson’s other organizations, The Legal Insurrection Foundation, filed against the Providence Public School District.
The foundation received a tip about the Educator of Color Loan Forgiveness Program, within the Providence Public School District funded by the Rhode Island Foundation, according to Jacobson.
This program is intended for newly hired or full-time teachers, who identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial or multi-racial that have at least $5,000 in student loan debt, according to the PPSD website.
“We were so outraged by the openly racially discriminatory conduct of the state’s largest school district that [we] filed a federal civil rights complaint,” Jacobson said. “That complaint against PPSD was recently opened as a formal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The DOJ sent a notice of investigation to the PPSD on March 21, according to Providence ABC6. No definitive conclusions have been made on the lawfulness of the program.
URI is reviewing the issue brought by the DOE’s letter of inquiry, according to a written statement by Dawn Bergantino, assistant director of communications at URI.
“The letter states that an inquiry does not imply wrongdoing on the part of the University,” Bergantino wrote. “Because this remains an open matter with the Department of Education, we are limited in what we can say at this time. We remain committed to our foundational values and mission and to complying with legal requirements.”
