Move highlights how legal threats from the Trump administration are discouraging DEI
Illinois has suspended a minority-only scholarship after the Department of Justice threatened to sue the state, the department said Friday. The department’s move, which came in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report on the program, is the latest example of how the Trump administration’s legal saber-rattling has deterred the use of racial preferences.
The program, which gave minorities financial aid to complete a master’s or doctoral degree, was run by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and included some of the top universities in the state, including Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Experts told the Free Beacon that the scholarship was patently illegal and could jeopardize the federal funding of every participating school. That is the verdict the Department of Justice reached when it launched its own probe, concluding that the program “unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The department threatened to sue Illinois if it did not suspend the initiative. The state complied, telling the department it would halt all activities related to the program until the Illinois General Assembly had an opportunity to review the matter. Six universities, including Northwestern and the University of Chicago, also said that they had ended their participation in the scholarship, which required schools to “verify” that applicants met the racial criteria.
The capitulations are an early win for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has promised to eliminate “illegal DEI and DEIA preferences” in higher education and the private sector. In a statement announcing the scholarship’s demise, Bondi noted that the federal government had not actually filed suit but that threatening litigation was sufficient to scuttle the program.
“This Department of Justice is committed to rooting DEI out of American institutions, including in the education system,” she said. “This latest victory illustrates that the threat of legal action can be enough to force bad actors into dissolving harmful practices that disregard merit and divide Americans based on race.”
While some institutions have vowed to defend DEI in the wake of the Trump administration’s assault, many have taken the path of least resistance. On the same day that the Department of Justice settlement was announced, for example, four law firms agreed to end their diversity programs as part of a deal with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The firms—Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and A&O Shearman Sterling—had all received letters from the agency requesting a rundown of their DEI practices, several of which appeared to violate anti-discrimination law. Rather than fight the government, each firm entered into a multiyear agreement with the EEOC that included “compliance monitoring.” In a statement announcing the agreements, EEOC chair Andrea Lucas said that “voluntary compliance” was the goal.
“We are hopeful these firms will be leaders in their industry by eliminating potentially unlawful DEI-based employment practices and returning to merit-based equal employment opportunity for all,” Lucas said.
The actions are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to mobilize the federal government against DEI, in part by requiring all agencies to identify up to nine targets for civil rights probes.
That directive has hit higher education especially hard. Last week the Trump administration paused nearly $2 billion in funding to Cornell and Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools. It has also frozen $400 million to Columbia over the school’s alleged failure to combat anti-Semitism, and $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania over its transgender athlete policies. Other targets include UCLA medical school, whose admissions practices are under investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Illinois scholarship was a case study of how DEI programs, while justified in the name of diversity, can, in fact, contribute to an ideological monoculture. One student stated in her application that she would “like to be a black queer psychology professor,” according to documents obtained by the National Association of Scholars and shared with the Free Beacon, while another described the “systemic threats” posed by “racism, sexism, patriarchy, colorism, featurism, [and] texturism.”
Established by state law in 2004, the scholarship was on the books for more than two decades before the Department of Justice intervened.
“The program was illegal and unconstitutional since its inception,” said Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “This isn’t a hard one.”
