By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – Tennessee’s Republican attorney general and the group behind the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision barring race-conscious college admissions filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a U.S. Department of Education program that awards grants to universities if Hispanics comprise 25% or more of their student bodies.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, argued in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Knoxville that Congress unconstitutionally exceeded its authority by creating a program that discriminates on the basis of race.
“A federal grant system that openly discriminates against students based on ethnicity isn’t just wrong and un-American—it’s unconstitutional,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The group’s arguments would appear to align with the efforts by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate programs it views as furthering the objectives of diversity, equity and inclusion, which the White House calls discriminatory.
The lawsuit takes aim at the Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program, which Congress created as part of Titles III and V of the Higher Education Act with the goal of supporting colleges and universities that serve a significant percentage of Hispanic students.
In the 2024 fiscal year, Congress appropriated at least $228.9 million for one sub-program, the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program, the complaint noted.
The lawsuit said colleges awarded grants can use the millions of dollars they receive to fund new lab equipment and STEM tutoring for low-income students, among other purposes.
But the lawsuit said that while the state of Tennessee operates many colleges and universities that serve Hispanic students, its schools are ineligible for funding “because they don’t have the right mix of ethnicities on campus.”
The lawsuit argues that the program as currently constituted was not a valid exercise of Congress’ spending power and that its discriminatory criteria runs afoul of the equal-protection principle included in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit cites the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision rejecting race-conscious policies long used by American colleges and universities to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses in cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
Those cases were filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a non-profit founded by Blum, who has pursued a series of cases since then challenging programs designed to bolster racial diversity in government and Corporate America.
The case is State of Tennessee v. U.S. Department of Education, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, No. 3:25-cv-270.
For the plaintiffs: Thomas McCarthy and Cameron Norris of Consovoy McCarthy; Adam Mortara of Lawfair; and Aaron Bernard of the Tennessee Office of the Attorney General
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)
