Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant

Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant is sponsored by Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board. This grant provides financial assistance for African-American, Native-American, Hispanic, and former citizens of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, for study in Wisconsin.

Minority Scholarship Programs for Technical College and Private Institution Students Declared Unconstitutional - Renning, Lewis & Lacy, S. C.

Minority Scholarship Programs for Technical College and Private Institution Students Declared Unconstitutional On June 18, 2026, the Wisconsin Supreme Court (Court) declared a 40-year-old minority undergraduate retention grant program (Grant Program) unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Equal Protection Clause) to the United States Constitution. See Rabiebna v.

Higher Educational Aids Board , 2026 WI 20. The Court relied on the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College ( SFFA ), which declared race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.

Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program Created in 1985 and expanded in 1987, Wis. Stat. § 39.

44 established the Grant Program, which allowed eligible technical colleges and private, nonprofit institutions of higher education to award certain sophomore, junior, or senior undergraduate students grants of up to $2,500 per academic year for up to 8 semesters or 12 academic quarters. Under Wis. Stat.

§ 39. 44, the grants could be awarded to any student who is a: “Hispanic, as defined in [Wis. Stat.

§] 16. 287(1)(d),” and “person… admitted to the United States after December 31, 1975… who either is a former citizen of Laos, Vietnam or Cambodia or whose ancestor was or is a citizen [of any of those countries]. ” The Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board (HEAB) administered the Grant Program and allocated the funds to higher education institutions and colleges in accordance with Wis.

Admin. Code § HEA 12. The Plaintiffs/Appellants (Appellants) consisted of five individuals, all of whom were Wisconsin taxpayers objecting to the use of their taxes being used in a discriminatory manner and two of whom have a biracial child who would be ineligible for the scholarship based on his race.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) represented the Appellants in this case and alleged that the Grant Program violated the Equal Protection Clause “by impermissibly limiting eligibility to students who belong” to the aforementioned “racial, national origin, ancestry, or alienage-based groups. ” Racial Discrimination.

When analyzing whether a statute violates the Equal Protection Clause, a court must first determine whether the statute discriminates based on race. In this case, the Court held that because Wis. Stat.

§ 39. 44 “treats members of specific race-, national origin-, ancestry-, or alienage-based groups different,” it “discriminates against students of nonpreferred classes by precluding them from eligibility for taxpayer-funded financial aid under the Grant Program. ” Strict Scrutiny.

When a statute discriminates on such bases, the statute must satisfy strict scrutiny. Under the two-step strict scrutiny test, a court must examine whether the: racial classification in the statute furthers a compelling governmental interest(s), and statute is narrowly tailored (i.e., not broader than needed) to achieve that interest. In Rabiebna, the Court concluded that Wis.

Stat. § 39. 44 failed both steps.

Compelling Interest. With respect to the compelling interest argument, HEAB asserted two interests. First, HEAB argued the statute promotes diversity of student bodies by offering financial support to minority students whose attrition rates are higher than White and Asian peers.

Second, HEAB argued that the statute equalizes education opportunities to certain students by offering them scholarships. Despite pre- SFFA United States Supreme Court decisions accepting diversity as a compelling interest, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that: HEAB [did] not even identif[y] any objectives or benefits it hope[d] to promote or achieve through diverse student bodies at private and technical colleges.

Thus, it [was] left to argue that diversity [was] a compelling interest in and of itself, a position that lacks support under current law [i.e., SFFA ]. With respect to the second asserted interest, HEAB produced data from 2015 and beyond demonstrating that the Grant Program produced favorable graduation and retention statistics for recipients.

However, according to the Court, when making a compelling interest argument, the government must offer evidence that it had a compelling interest when enacting the statute. Because the legislature enacted the statute in 1985 and HEAB produced data from decades later, the “HEAB [did not] show[ ] that the legislature identified an issue requiring its intervention at the statute’s inception. Narrowly Tailored.

Turning to the narrowly tailored step, HEAB argued that the Grant Program served certain groups whose college attrition rates exceeded White and Asian students and offered such students a small number of scholarships to improve those statistics. The Court rejected HEAB’s argument, stating that HEAB “failed to ‘consider[ ] workable race-neutral alternatives.

’” The Court went on to state as follows: When the government is seeking to further a diversity interest in the higher-education context, the government may not use race as a dispositive factor.

Instead, the government’s program may use race as one factor of many, but must “remain flexible enough to ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application. ” Because the Grant Program’s statute uses race as a dispositive factor for either of HEAB’s asserted interests, neither survives. Standing.

In addition to the strict scrutiny analysis, the Court also considered whether the Appellants had standing to bring the case before the Court. The Court held they did. In reaching that decision the Court identified that Wisconsin taxpayers have a right to challenge illegal expenditures of public funds, and because Wis.

Stat. § 39. 44 allocated public funds to racially preferred groups, individuals falling outside of such racially preferred groups, including the Appellants, alleged a pecuniary loss.

Although the Rabiebna case directly involves a statute impacting higher education scholarships, the case could have broader implications for race-related initiatives in Wisconsin’s K-12 schools and at the higher education level. In fact, the Managing Vice President and Deputy Counsel for WILL called the decision “a major win for students” and “a big win for taxpayers, who can now challenge many other race-based programs in state court.

” Because of those potential implications, we will continue to monitor how this decision may impact K-12 and higher education institutions. lpedersen@law-rll. com | 844.

626. 0909 For questions regarding this article, please contact the author, or your Renning, Lewis & Lacy attorney. Our legal updates provide general information only and are not intended to provide legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship.