TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Azya Thornton on Aug 27, 2025

In a memo sent to Congress on Friday, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) said it agrees with a lawsuit seeking to strike down grants reserved for colleges and universities where at least a quarter of undergraduates are Hispanic, the Associated Press reports. Tennessee and an anti-affirmative action group sued the U.S. Department of Education in June, asking a judge to halt the Hispanic-Serving Institution program (HSI). Tennessee argues that all of its public universities serve Hispanic students, but none meet the “arbitrary ethnic threshold” to qualify for the grants. Congress created the program in 1998 after finding Latino students were attending and graduating from college at far lower rates than white students. More than 500 schools are designated HSIs and received about $350 million in federal support last year. In the letter to Congress, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the program provides an unconstitutional advantage based on race or ethnicity and cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision ending affirmative action as grounds for declining to defend the policy.