The 13th Circuit Court for Boone County has approved the removal of racial and ethnic criteria from 53 donated scholarships and funds across the University of Missouri system.
The decision came on June 12, just a couple of weeks after the University of Missouri curators filed a petition to remove the criteria. The judgment calls the awarding of the race or ethnic-based funds unlawful, and it says the university system can now administer the funds with criteria that is quote “non-discriminatory.”
Scholarships with race-based criteria are often designed to address race disparities in higher education.
These will be the last funds with racial or ethnic requirements across the UM system to be removed since the Supreme Court outlawed race-based admissions last year. UM has already removed race or ethnic-based criteria from millions of dollars of scholarships.
A donor for one of the scholarships told Inside Higher Ed last week that they would be willing to join other donors if a class action suit were brought against the university.
Steven Hoffmann, an attorney in St. Louis, said the groups who established funds like the Ford Endowed Scholarship Fund or the Anheuser-Busch African-American Scholarship have enough money to wage a legal battle to keep the scholarships’ original intentions, if they choose to.
