With new lawsuit, Tennessee tries to kill a major lifeline for Hispanic students
The state of Tennessee is effectively targeting Latino students, and higher education institutions that serve them, with a federal lawsuit that threatens to undermine funding for the schools.
Last week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced that his state had teamed up with a right-wing organization called Students for Fair Admissions — which won a Supreme Court case against affirmative action admission policies in 2023 — in a lawsuit aiming to end the Hispanic-Serving Institution federal designation. HSIs are colleges and universities where at least 25% of the undergraduate students are Hispanic.
Much like historically Black colleges and universities, these schools have, at times, received specially authorized funding because a large number of their students come from racial or ethnic groups that have historically faced discrimination — and, in many cases, still do. But Tennessee’s lawsuit argues that the HSI classification is discriminatory in and of itself, and asks a U.S. district court to declare it unconstitutional.
“The State of Tennessee operates many colleges and universities,” the lawsuit says. “Every one of them serves Hispanic students. Every one of them serves low-income students. But not one of them qualifies to receive grants under the HSI program. Why? Because they don’t have the right mix of ethnicities on campus.”
Here we see the perverse logic of anti-diversity conservatives who insist that measures to promote the inclusion of historically marginalized groups are fundamentally exclusionary.
In reality, though, the MAGA movement has broadly wielded its power to make campuses less welcoming to nonwhite people.
One might suggest the fact that Tennessee is proposing an end to this designation completely is a clear indicator that this lawsuit seems more about cutting off a potential lifeline for Hispanic students than anything else. If not for the fact that conservatives are waging an all-out assault on campus diversity nationwide, the lawsuit’s claims of acting in students’ interest might seem a bit more credible.
In reality, though, the MAGA movement has broadly wielded its power to make campuses less welcoming to nonwhite people. The Trump administration has sought to strip visas from Chinese students (though the president appeared to backtrack on the threat last week). Trump’s education secretary suggested at her confirmation hearing that culturally focused graduation ceremonies constitute segregation. Trump himself has threatened schools’ accreditation over their diversity programs. And Republican-led states across the country — including Tennessee — have outlawed diversity programming or sought to ban lesson plans on the oppression of marginalized groups.
So if Tennessee’s effort to kill off Hispanic-Serving Institutions seems like yet another in a long list of attempts to target campus diversity, it’s probably because the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that’s the case.