Wisconsin Supreme Court judges sided with an earlier decision by an appellate court ruling to deem the Minority Underground Retention Grant Program unconstitutional, WisPolitics reported.
“Ensuring that all public educational opportunities are offered to all students is vital to a free and fair nation. The schoolhouse doors should be open to all,” conservative Justice Annette Ziegler wrote in the decision.
“But before the government may impose a race-, national origin-, ancestry-, or alienage-based remedy, it must demonstrate through previous government-sanctioned discrimination, regulatory discrimination, legislatively demonstrated statistical findings or otherwise that the problem it seeks to remedy actually existed when the statute was passed.”
The Higher Educational Aids Board administers the program, which was created in 1985. It uses taxpayer-funded grants to help Black, American Indian and Hispanic undergraduates attending private Wisconsin colleges.
The Supreme Court decision was unanimous.
