The Equal Protection Project, an anti-affirmative action group, filed a civil rights complaint against UNI last week based on 13 scholarships that the Equal Protection Project alleges violates Title IX and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. The complaint was filed with the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education. The complaint filed against UNI is one of many filed by the Equal Protection Project regarding race and gender preferences in scholarship criteria. 
The complaint names six scholarships that allegedly violate Title VI, two scholarships that allegedly violate both Title IX and Title VI, and five scholarships that allegedly violate Title IX. All of these scholarships give preference to applicants based on race, gender, or both. Scholarships such as the Black Hawk County Opportunities Endowed Scholarship and the Class of 1945 Women’s Endowed Scholarship are named in the complaint filed by the Equal Protection Project. According to the Equal Protection Project, due to UNI receiving federal funding, these scholarships 
UNI is amongst over fifty other universities that the Equal Protection Project has filed civil complaints against, many revolving around scholarships that give preference based on race and gender. In 2022, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Students for Fair Admissions v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College. The Students for Fair Admissions challenges Harvard’s admissions policies, arguing that factoring race into the admissions process violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Students for Fair Admissions, effectively overturning affirmative action policies and eliminating university abilities to factor in race and gender into admissions processes. The Equal Protection Project alleges that this reversal indicates that several UNI scholarships also violate the Civil Rights Act. 
“In this case, the explicit use of race, skin color, and sex-based criteria constitutes unlawful discrimination. Additionally, such criteria serve as ‘signals’ of racial and sex-based preferences,” the complaint alleges. “Regardless of UNI’s reasons for offering, promoting, and administering such discriminatory scholarships, UNI is violating Title VI and Title IX by doing so. It does not matter if the recipient of federal funding discriminates in order to advance a benign ‘intention’ or ‘motivation.’” 
According to Pete Moris, UNI’s Director of University Relations, the UNI Foundation has already been in the process of changing the language and requirements of scholarships provided, prior to the complaint being filed by the Equal Protection Project. But, as this is an ongoing legal matter, Moris said the university could not give further comment on the situation. 
The Office of Civil Rights now has jurisdiction to evaluate the complaint. The Equal Protection Project has requested that the Office of Civil Rights open up an investigation into the alleged discrimination and “impose such remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from UNI’s various scholarships based on discriminatory criteria, and ensure that all ongoing and future scholarships and programming at UNI comports with the Constitution and federal civil rights laws,” as the Equal Protection Project’s complaint states. Although the Equal Protection Project requested an expedited evaluation and investigation, it is unclear how long the complaint will pend before evaluation by the Office of Civil Rights. The Northern Iowan will continue to update as throughout the Office of Civil Rights’s evaluation.




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