Civil rights group alleges a Michigan college's scholarship focused on trans-racial adoptees is discriminatory
"The large number (65) of discriminatory scholarships at Calvin is shocking," Cornell professor William Jacobson and founder of the Equal Protection Project, told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"At EqualProtect.org we have challenged discriminatory programs and scholarships at over 60 colleges and universities, but never have we seen such a large number at any single institution."
The scholarships that the Equal Protection Project alleges are discriminatory are the Endurance Scholarship, which requires the applicant to "self-identify as an African American who is a U.S. citizen," and the Trans-Racial Adoptee Scholarship, which requires applicant to be "trans-racially adopted," and the Carol L. Faber Math Scholarship, which requires that "first preference is for a female student." The scholarship amounts are $3,000, $3,500, and $3,100 respectively.
The Equal Protection Project maintains these scholarship programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits educational institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin, as well as Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or gender for entities that receive federal funding.
In 2020, Calvin University received a $935,000 grant from the Department of Education or $187,000 per year for five years, for students who have disabilities, are low-income, or who are first-generation.
On its website, Calvin University lists federal grants for students that include a $7,395 Pell Grant, a supplemental educational opportunity grant for up to $2,000, and a TEACH grant for up to $4,000.
Jacobson told Fox News Digital that he hopes Education Secretary Linda McMahon will focus on restoring civil rights.
"While the Department of Education is undergoing a restructuring, enforcement of the civil rights laws to eliminate DEI discrimination remains a stated priority of the new Trump administration," Jacobson said. "We hope that Secretary McMahon will maintain this focus on civil rights enforcement in order to advance the administration's overall civil rights agenda. To scale back enforcement would be self-defeating and would undermine efforts to eliminate discrimination done in the name of DEI in higher education."
On Tuesday, Department of Education employees received a "reduction in force" notice before about half of the department's employees were let go.
In its complaint, the Equal Protection Project quotes Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion in Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., where he said that "discrimination on the basis of race is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, inherently wrong and destructive of a democratic society."
"Accordingly, we respectfully ask that the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights prioritize and expedite this complaint given the sheer number of discriminatory scholarships at Calvin reflecting a systematic disregard for Titles VI and IX, promptly open a formal investigation, impose such remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from Calvin's various scholarships based on discriminatory criteria, and ensure that all ongoing and future scholarships and programming at Calvin comports with the federal civil rights laws," the complaint continues.
Fox News Digital reached out to Calvin University for comment and has not yet received a response.
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The Intercept
9 hours ago
- The Intercept
Guess Who's Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents
As President Donald Trump plots to halt student loan forgiveness for many government and nonprofit workers, his administration is offering a special type of debt relief to one category of workers: new ICE agents. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday it will offer student loan forgiveness and repayment options to new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits — along with a $50,000 signing bonus. The announcement comes as the Trump administration works to limit the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for groups the president considers political enemies. Since 2007, borrowers employed by the government or nonprofit organizations serving a wide range of public interest causes have been eligible for forgiveness through PSLF. But in July, the Department of Education took a major step in altering the program's rules to exclude certain employers in accordance with Trump's executive order 'Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness,' which claims the loan forgiveness 'has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means.' Under the revised rules, nonprofits that help transgender youth access gender-affirming care and attorneys who provide legal assistance to undocumented immigrants, among others, might no longer qualify, according to the press release from the Department of Education. Final language has yet to be published; before it takes effect, there will be an opportunity for public comment. Experts in higher education and student debt told The Intercept that the administration is deploying the financial aid system as a tool to advance its political agenda, punish perceived enemies, and reward allies. 'This just shows the lengths that the Trump administration will go to to weaponize Public Service Loan Forgiveness and debt more broadly to achieve their fascist objectives,' said Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center. Over the last few years, Republicans have fought to limit student debt relief for borrowers. Last year, Republican attorneys general successfully lobbied the Supreme Court to pause the SAVE Plan, an income-based repayment plan implemented by the Biden administration that allowed borrowers to make smaller monthly payments and achieve debt relief within a shorter time frame. The Big, Beautiful, Bill signed by Trump in July eliminates the SAVE Plan as of July 1, 2028, and replaces it with significantly less generous repayment options for student loans. 'We're going to see a wave of defaults happening, and we're going to see more people who can't afford their payments.' On Friday, the Department of Education resumed interest accrual on SAVE Plan loans, meaning nearly 8 million borrowers are now seeing their debt grow. On top of that, the spending bill creates new limits on federal borrowing for graduate students and parents taking out loans on behalf of their children — meaning families and people attending higher cost educational programs such as medical school will likely have to take out higher interest private loans. 'We're going to see a wave of defaults happening, and we're going to see more people who can't afford their payments,' said Sara Partridge, associate director of higher education at the Center for American Progress. Partridge said implementing changes that will make life harder for millions of borrowers while championing debt forgiveness for ICE agents is peak hypocrisy. 'It is hypocritical to provide additional funding for debt relief for certain categories of workers while seeking to deny it to everyday Americans,' said Partridge. Sam Alig, 36, a borrower enrolled on the SAVE Plan, said Republicans and the administration have left borrowers in chaos as they scramble to figure out how much they'll owe under the new income-based repayment systems. 'It's such a mess,' said Alig. 'Every single time I call, they tell me something else. … It's $400 [per month] now. Six months from now, it could be $800, I have no idea.' The irony of the new DHS announcement isn't lost on Alig. 'It's also funny that Republicans are going to get behind student forgiveness when it comes to ICE agents, because they're so against student loan forgiveness for the entire working and middle class.' It's not completely clear how the ICE loan forgiveness program will be funded. The departments of Homeland Security and Education did not respond to requests for comment. The influx of $170 billion for DHS from the new spending bill could be a mechanism to help pay off new recruits loans. Government agencies can use their own funding to offer loan assistance as a recruitment and retention strategy via a separate initiative, the Federal Student Loan Repayment program, which allows agencies to repay federal student loans for their employees up to $10,000 a year and $60,000 per employee. The contrast between how the Trump administration is treating most borrowers and ICE agents is 'shocking,' said Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at EdTrust, an education-focused nonprofit. 'The Department of Education is effectively putting other people's cancellations on hold, while fast-tracking this other group of folks who haven't done anything to warrant cancellation,' said Pilar. 'To me, it's outrageous, and it shows where the priority of this administration is.' The expected changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program will likely face legal challenge, Partridge said. 'I'm sure there's going to be a lawsuit against it, but still,' said Partridge, 'it's a major abuse of power for the government to wield this tool to advance its political ends and to propose denying loan forgiveness to borrowers who work for organizations that this administration disfavors.' The rule hasn't been published yet, but Partridge said it's expected to impact a wide range of people who have been targets in the Trump administration. 'This administration is wielding the power of the federal financial aid system to advance its ideological goals.' 'If enacted, [it would] deny Public Service Loan Forgiveness to people at organizations doing work that this administration disagrees with, particularly those who do things such as providing legal services to immigrants or providing gender-affirming care,' said Partridge. The vague language around 'substantial illegal purposes' also opens the door for more groups to be cut out of the program. 'It also would allow the administration to deny loan forgiveness to people who work at organizations that they say violate state law, and that includes trespassing, which we know historically has been used against protesters,' she said. 'So there are ways that this administration is wielding the power of the federal financial aid system to advance its ideological goals.' Weaponizing the cost of an education isn't a new tactic from the right. Amid nationwide campus protests against the Vietnam War, then-California Gov. 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USA Today
12 hours ago
- USA Today
From marginal religious groups to mainstream Christians: Why some see a shift in Supreme Court cases
The court's first case involving a Rastafarian highlights the role smaller religious groups have played in the court's history, even as more cases come from mainstream Christian groups. WASHINGTON – There have been no shortage of religious groups seeking help from the Supreme Court in recent years, including three cases last term that involved the Catholic Church. But the religion at the center of a case set for after the summer is not nearly as well represented in the population - or in the courtroom. In fact, it appears to be the first time the Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a Rastafarian. Damon Landor said his religious rights were violated when his dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by Louisiana prison guards. More: Supreme Court to decide if prison officials can be sued over inmates' religious rights Handcuffed to a chair while his dreadlocks were shaved off Landor had shown prison officials a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated. But an intake guard threw the ruling in the trash and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while his knee-length locks were shaved off. The justices will decide whether Landor can sue the guards for compensation under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Landor – whose appeal was backed by more than 30 religious groups and the Justice Department − argues that monetary damages are often the only way to hold prison officials accountable when religious rights are violated. Legal experts on religion cases expect the court will side with the Rastafarian. That would be consistent not just with the high success rate of appeals the court agrees to hear from religious people, but also with the role smaller religious groups have played in the court's history. Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists Most of the religious cases Richard Garnett teaches in his classes at the University of Notre Dame Law School involve smaller religious communities, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists. 'The story of religious freedom in America has developed through cases involving members of minority religions,' Garnett said. Other court watchers, however, say that was more true in the past than it is now. 'That's kind of a legacy view,' said Carl Esbeck, an expert on religious liberty at the University of Missouri School of Law. In fact, a 2022 study found that; since 2005, the winning religion in most Supreme Court religious cases was a mainstream Christian organization. In the past, by contrast, pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations, according to the analysis by Lee Epstein at Washington University in St. Louis and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School. 'The religion clauses of the First Amendment were once understood to provide modest but meaningful protection for non-mainstream religions from discrimination by governments that favored mainstream Christian organizations, practices, or values,' they wrote. Similarly, traditionalist Christians – such as orthodox Catholics and Baptists – had been significantly less successful than other religious groups in getting accommodations from lower federal courts from 1986 to 1995, according to a study by Michael Heise of Cornell Law School and Gregory Sisk of the University of St. Thomas School of Law. But from 2006 to 2015, their disadvantage 'appeared to fade into statistical insignificance,' they wrote in 2022. The Supreme Court, they said, 'appears to be setting the stage for a more equitable and expansive protection of religious liberty.' Colorado and the gay wedding cake debate Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, agrees that the court has taken an expansive view of religious liberty protections. But he says it hasn't always been equitable. In 2018, the court said Colorado had shown "religious hostility" to a baker who didn't want to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. More: How a Supreme Court case about a gay couple's wedding cake got caught up in Israeli judicial reform But that same month, Mach said, the court upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban 'even in the face of Trump's repeated unambiguous statements condemning Islam and Muslims.' More broadly, he said, the court's 'general hostility to the separation of church and state' erodes protections for minority groups promised by the First Amendment's prohibition against the government favoring a specific religion or favoring religion in general. 'Built into that structure is necessarily a protection against the imposition by the majority of its favored religious doctrine,' he said. In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at 'Eradicating anti-Christian Bias' and calling on agencies to eliminate the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." The administration cited that order when telling federal employees in a July 28 memo they may discuss and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace. More: Supreme Court blocks Catholic charter school in big setback for religion advocates Ruling for Amish built on to benefit other religions In June, the Supreme Court built upon a 1972 ruling for the Amish as it affirmed the religious rights of parents to remove their elementary school children from class when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are being used. When deciding more than 50 years ago that Amish parents did not have to keep their children in school until age 16 as Wisconsin required, the court said those parents had an argument 'that probably few other religious groups or sects could make.' But Justice Samuel Alito left no doubt about the broader significance of Wisconsin v. Yoder in the 6-3 opinion he authored in June that sided with parents from a variety of religious backgrounds − including Roman Catholic but also Muslim, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and other faiths − who objected to the LGBTQ+ storybooks used in Maryland school district. 'Yoder is an important precedent of this Court, and it cannot be breezily dismissed as a special exception granted to one particular religious minority,' Alito wrote. More: Supreme Court sides with Maryland parents who want to avoid LGBTQ+ books in public schools In a 2020 speech to the conservative Federalist Society, Alito had warned that 'religious liberty is in danger of becoming a second-class right.' He listed examples of cases he'd judged about religious minorities, including the rights of Muslim police officers to have beards, of a Jewish prisoner to organize a Torah study group and whether a Native American could keep a bear for religious services. The baker who didn't want to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and Catholic nuns who objected to insurance coverage for contraceptives 'deserve no less protection,' Alito said about more recent cases. More: Supreme Court sides with Catholic Charities in case about tax exemptions and religion `Clear pattern of preference for religious groups' Cornell Law School Professor Nelson Tebbe said more of the claims about religious freedom started to come from mainstream majority Christian groups as political polarization increased and as the gay rights movement picked up speed. 'Suddenly, civil libertarian groups who had been on the side of minority religions…started to realize that civil rights laws could be vulnerable to religious attacks by conservative Christians and they started to get worried,' Tebbe said. As the court has shifted its approach, he said, the justices have both granted exemptions from regulations that burden religion as well as said government must treat religious groups no differently than secular organizations when providing public benefits − such as school vouchers. 'While both of those could be seen as understandable on their own terms, when you put them together, there's a clear pattern of preference for religious groups,' he said. 'It's a pretty dramatic moment in constitutional law in this area.' Garnett, the religious freedom expert at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said the court's decisions are a reflection of the ongoing debate over how much accommodation should be given in a country with diverse religious views. 'So the fact that those cases are coming up isn't because the court sort of shifted to protecting majority groups,' he said. 'It's because events on the ground shifted. And the nature of the controversies that are served up are different.'
USA Today
16 hours ago
- USA Today
Senate confirms Trump's pick to oversee higher ed, a man tied to for-profit colleges
The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to oversee higher education policy, a man with deep ties to the for-profit college industry, by a 50-to-45 vote on August 1. Senate Majority John Thune filed cloture on Kent's nomination earlier in the week. And the education committee had already advanced Kent on a 12-11 vote without a hearing in late May. The undersecretary at the Department of Education oversees billions in federal financial aid and is charged with ensuring America's colleges provide a quality education. Education Secretary Linda McMahon had previously told USA TODAY that Kent is a 'natural leader' whose experience and concern for students 'make him the ideal selection for under secretary of education." He had won the support of several prominent university trade groups who are opposed to Trump's attacks on universities, but said they supported Kent's nomination. His confirmation comes as the Trump administration seeks to reshape higher education and has launched numerous investigations into high profile universities. Kent had already been working at the agency on the administration's initiatives like K-12 school choice. But prior to working in the government, Kent had a long history working for or close to for-profit colleges. From 2008 to the end of 2015, Kent worked for Education Affiliates, a for-profit college company. When he left, he was a vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs. In 2015, the Department of Justice announced the company had agreed to a $13 million settlement to settle accusations it had gamed the federal financial aid system. The company told USA TODAY Kent was not involved in the settlement or the allegations of fraud. Critics, including student advocacy groups and teacher unions, had called on the Senate education committee to put Kent through a public hearing to answer questions about his time working for the company. And one of the original whistleblowers tied to that case, Dorothy Thomas, expressed concern about someone from the company's leadership holding the under secretary position. Kent had also worked for Career Education Colleges and Universities, a for-profit college trade group. He developed a reputation for deep policy knowledge while speaking against regulations geared toward the for-profit college industry. That group's CEO, Jason Altmire, said Kent was not driven by partisan politics and would bring an unbiased view to the under secretary position. He then went to work for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration as a deputy secretary of education. Youngkin, in a prepared statement, said Kent improved how Virginia manages colleges and made them more accountable to students and families through increased transparency. Chair of the Virginia Senate's education committee, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi, told USA TODAY Kent had tried to destabilize accreditation in the state and he was aligned with efforts to dismantle consumer protections. In a departing message to the commonwealth, Kent said he was proud of reducing costs while pushing for free speech and accountability at Virginia's colleges. Chris Quintana is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY. He can be reached at cquintana@ or via Signal at 202-308-9021. He is on X at @CQuintanaDC
