Washington (AP) -The Trump administration said on Friday that she would not defend decades of granting programs for universities with a enormous number of Hispanic students who are being challenged in court, and explains that the government is that the financing is unconstitutional.
In a memo sent to the congress, the Ministry of Justice with a lawsuit in which attempts are made to coordinate grants that are reserved for colleges and universities where at least a quarter of the students are Hispanic. The Congress founded the program in 1998, after found that Latino students visited college and were completed as white students at far lower prices.
Officials from the Ministry of Justice argued that the program offers an unconstitutional advantage based on the breed or ethnicity.
The state of Tennessee and an organization against affirmative actions sued the US education department in June and asked a judge to hire the program for Hispanic services. Tennessee argued that all of their public universities serve Hispanic students, but nobody encountered the “arbitrary ethnic threshold” to calculate the grants. These schools miss tens of million dollars due to discriminatory requirements, the lawsuit says.
On Friday, the Ministry of Justice published a letter in which General Prosecutor D. John Sauer, the spokesman for the Republican House, Mike Johnson, published that the department had “decided not to defend the program”, and said certain aspects of this were unconstitutional. In the letter of July 25, the decision of the Supreme Court cited in 2023, which awarded positive measures in which “direct racist balance is” obviously unconstitutional “.
The Ministry of Justice rejected a statement.
Tennessee is supported in the lawsuit of students for fair approvals, a conservative legal group, which successfully questioned positive measures when admission to Harvard and the University of North Carolina. This lawsuit led to a decision by the Supreme Court of 2023 that the university’s universities prohibited from considering the breed of the students when making approval.
Edward Blum, President of Students for Fair Administration, said on Friday that the group would reject it to comment.
More than 500 universities and universities are referred to as Hispanic servant institutions, which means that they are entitled to the subsidy program. In 2024, the Congress appropriated around 350 million US dollars for the program. The universities compete for the grants that can go into a number of uses, from building improvements to scientific programs.
Former President Joe Biden made Hispanic universities a priority and signed an executive lawsuit last year that promised a up-to-date presidential advisory committee and increased the financing. President Donald Trump revoked his first day of office.
Trump takes steps to reduce the educational department and demanded massive funding, but his budget application from 2026 received grants for Hispanic Colleges and even asked for a slight augment. Nevertheless, there was doubts about the commitment of his government for the financing.
A national association of Hispanic universities submitted an application last month to intervene as a accused in the Tennessee complaint, and said concerns that the federal government would not adequately represent the members of the group.
The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities said that Trump’s agenda was “completely disadvantageous” for the interests of the group and quoted the goal of the president of completely closing the educational department. The administration is “in the file that condemns programs such as HSIs, take into account ethnic or racist inequalities,” wrote the group.
Tennessee and students for fair approvals had no objections to the group’s request to lead the right defense.
In contrast to historically black or American tribal universities and universities that receive their names based on their missions, each college can receive the HSI label and subsidies if its Latino enrollment is at least 25% of the student body.
The HSIS list includes flagship campus such as the University of Texas in Austin and the University of Arizona as well as many community colleges and smaller institutions.
In his court registration, the national association argues that the grants are constitutional and facilitate to put their members on an even competitive conditions.
The group’s schools occupy 67% of the country students from the country’s Latino students, but studies find that these schools receive far fewer state and federal funds than other institutions. Hispanic-serious universities are students of all breeds openly-the association pointed out to the Southern Adventist University, a private school in Tennessee, whose student body is 28% Hispanian and 40% white.
The Ministry of Justice generally has the obligation to maintain the constitution and the federal legislation, but in occasional cases it can refuse to defend laws that he believes that they are unconstitutional. The Obama government did this in 2011 when it refused to enforce the law on the defense of marriage. During his first term, Trump did the same with the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump administration has fought to end the politics of diversity, justice and inclusion in government, education and business and argue that they discriminate against the white and Asian American people.
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Gecker reported from San Francisco.
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