Lawsuit Accuses George Floyd Scholarship of Violating Federal Civil Rights Law 

The George Floyd Memorial Scholarship offered at a college in Minnesota is facing a lawsuit after being accused of violating the Civil Rights Act. 

According to a complaint filed by the conservative nonprofit Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, the George Floyd Memorial Scholarship at North Central University in Minneapolis violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” 

According to the school’s website, applicants must “be a student who is Black or African American, that is, a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa” in order to be eligible. Applicants who don’t fall in that racial category are automatically disqualified from ineligibility for the scholarship. 

At the time of the scholarship’s implementation in 2020, North Central President Scott Hagan said it was created to “invest like never before in a new generation of young black Americans, who are poised and ready to take leadership in our nation.”

However, foundation leadership is looking at it from a different viewpoint. “The George Floyd Scholarship eligibility requirements are openly racially discriminatory,” founder William Jacobson said, according to Fox News. “Regardless of the purpose of the racial discrimination, it is wrong and unlawful.” He continued to propose a plan that would “compensate students shut out of the George Floyd Scholarship due to discrimination.” 

The foundation proclaims its mission is to be an advocate for the advancement of free expression and academic freedom on college campuses. The suit also claims the scholarship  may have criminal consequences since it “defies the civil rights protections of Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which makes it a criminal offense for an educational institution to limit access to any educational program on the basis of race.” 

Jacobson touched on the Supreme Court’s controversial overturn of affirmative action in 2023. On June 29, the Supreme Court decided that the race-conscious admissions systems of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC) are unconstitutional. This marks the end of affirmative action admission policies at colleges and universities.

Liberal Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson was one of three justices who filed a dissenting opinion. As one of two Black justices sitting in the high court, Jackson disagreed with Clarence Thomas, who suggested that instead of treating people as the sum of their experiences and challenges, Jackson countered, saying Thomas is the one who “demonstrates an obsession with race consciousness.” 

“Our country has never been colorblind,” Jackson wrote. 

Jacobson favored Chief Justice Roberts’s view: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

“NCU knows better than to run educational scholarships that exclude students based on race,” the founder stated. 

“NCU’s nondiscrimination policies absolutely forbid racial discrimination. Why isn’t NCU living up to its own rules?”

While the lawsuit is pending, the scholarship is still accepting applications for the 2024-25 academic school year. The recipient will be selected by June. 2024.

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