Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz approved a state law that discriminates against white students who want to become educators by barring them from applying for a “teachers of color” scholarship program, according to a bombshell civil rights complaint obtained by The Post.
The “Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship” program — worth up to $25,000 per student — is restricted to applicants who have financial need and “belong to a racial or ethnic group underrepresented in the state’s teacher workforce,” a press release from the governor’s office crowed this past June.
However, the Equal Protection Project (EPP) claimed in a complaint filed Monday with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that the Walz administration is practicing blatant bias in violation of Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“The Minnesota Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship openly discriminates based on race and skin color,” said EPP founder William Jacobson, a clinical law professor at Cornell University. “Regardless of the intention, such discrimination is wrong and unlawful under both federal and state law.”
The goal of the program, administered by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE) on behalf of Walz, is to boost recruitment of black people and members of other ethnic groups underrepresented in the state’s teaching workforce.
“The Equal Protection Project calls on Governor Walz to use his executive authority to end racial discrimination by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education regarding the Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship, which he signed into law and funded,” Jacobson added.
“All Minnesota students have a constitutional and statutory right to be treated equally without regard to race or skin color.”
The EPP complaint alleges such scholarship programs are on shaky legal ground after the US Supreme Court ruled last year that race-based college and university affirmative action programs violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and federal civil rights laws.
“There is no ‘good’ form of racism, and the remedy for racism is not more racism,” said Jacobson, echoing Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in that case.
More than 200 students have benefitted from the Minnesota scholarship program, according to Walz’s office.
Nearly all awardees were black, Hispanic or Asian students, according to data compiled by OHE and referenced in the complaint.
The EPP has previously filed other complaints against racial preference programs run by the New York State Education Department, Fordham University, and the State University of New York’s Albany campus and Buffalo Law School.
The University of Minnesota last year backed away from implementing racial requirements for a summer program that banned white students.
Waltz spokesman Keith Hovis said the governor’s office had not received any formal complaint about the scholarship program before adding that he would not comment “on any pending litigation or ongoing investigations.”
The US Department of Education had no immediate comment.
