An article from Dive Brief Federal judge dismisses lawsuit challenging McNair program’s race-based criteria

The Trump appointee said the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue, though he left room for them to refile their complaint.

Published Jan. 16, 2025 Natalie Schwartz Senior Editor

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Dive Brief: 

• A federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s race-based criteria for a federal grant program, ruling that the plaintiffs who filed the complaint lacked standing to sue. 
• Two students and conservative group Young America’s Foundation — as well as Young Americans for Freedom, its chapter affiliate — sued over the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achieve Program in August. They alleged that the program’s race-based eligibility criteria violated their right to equal protection under the law. 
• But U.S. District Judge Peter Welte, a Trump appointee, dismissed the lawsuit on Dec. 31 because the program isn’t exclusively administered by the Education Department. Welte wrote that he couldn’t address the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries because the colleges that award funding to students weren’t also parties to the lawsuit. 

Dive Brief:

The federal judge dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning that the conservative groups and two students could refile their complaint. Daniel Lennington, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said they’re reviewing the decision and will announce next steps within the next few weeks.

“We are still committed to opening up the McNair Program to all students and removing the racial qualifications,” Lennington said in an email. 

Scholarships and grants with race-based eligibility criteria have been under fire since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision striking down race-conscious admissions. Although that decision didn’t address scholarships, some state attorneys general and advocacy groups have argued that its reasoning also forbids race-based grants. 

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The plaintiffs had asked Welte to permanently block the Education Department from using race-based criteria for the McNair program. The roughly 35-year-old program aims to increase doctoral attainment among underrepresented students. 

The McNair program is open to two groups of learners — low-income, first-generation students, and those who are underrepresented in graduate education. 

The Education Department defines groups underrepresented in graduate programs as students who are Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiians or Native American Pacific Islanders. However, federal regulations also allow students who don’t belong to those groups to qualify, so long as they are part of a demographic “underrepresented in certain academic disciplines.”

The agency awards funding to colleges every five years for McNair projects. The last round came in 2022, meaning new grants aren't expected until 2027, according to court documents. 

To apply for the competitive grants, colleges must attest that low-income, first-generation students will make up at least two-thirds of a project’s participants, and that underrepresented students will comprise the remainder, court documents said. 

However, colleges may add other eligibility criteria, such as minimum GPA requirements. They can also forgo the race-based criteria altogether, Welte noted in his ruling. 

In the lawsuit, the two students said they sought to apply for McNair programs at the University of North Dakota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. However, both were ineligible because they are White and don’t meet the other criteria for low-income, first-generation students. Neither ultimately applied for the program. 

Welte wrote that the two institutions now control their McNair programs’ admission decisions and grants given to students since they received funding for them from the department through 2027. 

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“Problematically though, UND and UW-Madison are not parties,” Welte wrote. “The Court has no recourse in preventing UND and UW-Madison from continuing to admit students under the challenged criteria.”

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