University of California San Diego campus; UC San Diego Undergraduate Admissions/YouTube
University of California San Diego campus; UC San Diego Undergraduate Admissions/YouTube
The University of California San Diego recently expanded a scholarship that was previously limited to black students, making it available to students of all races following a lawsuit against the school.
A conservative nonprofit, the Pacific Legal Foundation, challenged the program under the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 law that prevents government officials and private groups from working together to infringe upon equal protection rights, according to a news release from the legal group. 
UC San Diego had moved its Black Alumni Scholarship Fund to a private nonprofit to circumvent California’s ban on race-based scholarships. 
The school gave the scholarship fund the names and contact information of all black admitted students so it could send invitations exclusively to those students, according to PFL. 
The program even advertised that, because it operated with private funding and was not bound by California’s Proposition 209, “100% of BASF Scholars identify as Black/African American.”
The school maintained the scholarship for 42 years, awarding over $1 million to more than 400 black UCSD students pursuing degrees in engineering, math, science, and technology fields, according to Minding the Campus. 
However, after PFL and its partners sued, UCSD renamed the scholarship the “Goins Alumni Scholarship Fund” and opened it to all students, regardless of race. The legal group then dropped the case Monday, according to a news release from PFL. 
“This victory proves that the Constitution’s promise of equality before the law still has teeth,” PFL attorney Jack Brown said.
“The Ku Klux Klan Act was written to stop government actors from conspiring with private parties to discriminate—and that’s exactly what happened here. When faced with the law, UCSD and its affiliates had no choice but to retreat. The action here is exactly what we demanded in our lawsuit,” he stated. 
Another PFL attorney for this case, Haley Dutch, told the Washington Free Beacon the KKK Act “could apply to any racial discrimination by a nonprofit that is so intertwined with a university that it essentially serves a government function.”
The Free Beacon also reported that PFL vindicated “a novel legal strategy that could be used to challenge similar programs.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice warned in a memo that “race based scholarships,” “preferential hiring,” and other DEI initiatives are “unlawful practices,” The College Fix previously reported. 
The memo specifically listed “scholarship fund[s] exclusively for students of a specific racial group” as unlawful.
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