Case Particulars

Tribunal

Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights

Date Filed

October 1, 2024

Docket No.

N/A

Case Status

OCR Complaint Filed

Case Overview

On October 1, 2024, the Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed a Civil Rights Complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against the University of Virginia (“UVA”). The Complaint alleges that UVA, which is a recipient of federal funding, is violating the law ” for creating, sponsoring and promoting a racially discriminatory program called the BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program (“BIPOC Mentoring Program”).”

The Complaint succinctly explains why the BIPOC Mentoring Program violates federal law:

The BIPOC Mentoring Program violates Title VI because it conditions eligibility for participation on a student’s race, ethnicity and skin color. And, because UVA is a public university, its creation, sponsorship, promotion and hosting of this discriminatory program also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

Title VI prohibits intentional discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any “program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000d. The term “program or activity” means “all of the operations of … a public system of higher education.” See 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-4a(2)(A). As UVA receives federal funds, it is subject to Title VI and OCR’s jurisdiction.

 

Indeed, based on the requirement that participating students be BIPOC, any reasonable student viewing the information on the UVA website would understand the racially exclusionary basis of the program, and non-BIPOC students would be dissuaded from even applying or attempting to participate.

The Complaint then sums up and requests OCR take action:

Because the discriminatory eligibility criteria of the BIPOC Mentoring Program are presumptively invalid, and because UVA cannot show any compelling justification for those restrictions, the limitation of this mentorship based on race, color and ethnicity violates federal civil rights statutes and constitutional equal protection guarantees.

 

The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate UVA’s role in creating, promoting and administering this program and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary to hold it accountable for that unlawful conduct. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law. After all, “[t]he way to stop discrimination,” the Supreme Court has taught, “is to stop discriminating[.]” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. [v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 720-22 (2007)].

 

Accordingly, we respectfully ask that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights open a formal investigation, impose such remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from the UVA’s BIPOC Mentoring Program based on discriminatory criteria and ensure that all ongoing and future programming through UVA comports with the Constitution and federal civil rights laws.

OCR is evaluating EPP’s Complaint for further action.

Update: On October 9, 2024, Just the News, then Fox News and others reported that UVA had changed the program terms on its program website to delete reference to strict racial eligibility for the program.