A civil rights organization filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s over concerns the company’s scholarship program for high schoolers discriminates against non-Hispanic students.
The American Alliance for Equal Rights mounted the challenge to McDonald’s HACER program over the weekend, arguing that denying aid on the basis of race is unconstitutional. The group alleged that the scholarship initiative, which has handed out $33 million in funding to thousands of Latino students, violates the United States’s civil rights laws because it doesn’t offer the same opportunities to non-Hispanic students.
AAER filed the lawsuit after a high school senior from Arkansas was turned down for the HACER program because she was white.
“McDonald’s gives unusually large scholarships (up to $100,000) through a program called HACER. The catch? McDonald’s gives them only to Hispanics,” the lawsuit says. “As a non-Hispanic white girl, the Arkansan cannot apply. Despite her financial need. Despite her inability to choose or control her ethnic heritage.”
Earlier this month, McDonald’s scrapped many diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action. The move followed similar decisions by a host of major U.S. companies, including Walmart, Lowe’s, John Deere, Tractor Supply, and Ford, that backed away from DEI policies. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta most recently ditched its DEI initiatives, similarly pointing to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on affirmative action.
AAER President Edward Blum played a key role in opposing the race-based policy, leading to the court’s ruling prohibiting racial preferences in college admissions.
Blum slammed the fast food franchise for not including the HACER program in the list of DEI items on the company’s chopping block.
“When corporations say they will replace controversial and polarizing programs with more neutral ones, it does not always mean the company has undergone any meaningful changes,” he said in a press release. “It is astonishing that after what McDonald’s describes as a comprehensive civil-rights audit of its programs and policies, the Hispanic-only HACER scholarship was not flagged for likely being a violation of our nation’s civil rights laws.”
Blum added that he hopes McDonald’s “immediately pauses this scholarship program so it can be opened to all under-resourced high school students regardless of their ethnic heritage.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, McDonald’s suggested it would be scrutinizing the HACER program as it deals with the backlash.
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“We are in the process of reviewing the complaint and will respond to it accordingly. However, McDonald’s announced its evolution on our inclusion work last week, and part of that process will be reviewing programs, in partnership with our franchisees as applicable, to ensure these programs align with our vision moving forward,” the fast-food giant said.
The HACER program isn’t McDonald’s only race-based scholarship program. The company also spearheads the Black & Positively Golden Scholarship and the APIA Scholarship.
