White Applicants Need Not Apply

Race-based scholarships are still alive—and still unconstitutional.

Imagine a scholarship application that asserts, in bold letters: "White applicants need not apply." That’s not hypothetical; it’s exactly what state education agencies and tax-exempt nonprofits are still doing in 2026.

Racism cannot be eliminated with more racism.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must go after these discriminatory practices that the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.

Taxpayer-Funded Discrimination

In 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. President and Fellows of Harvard College that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause applies equally to everyone, regardless of race. The ruling states, "race may never be used as a 'negative' and that it may not operate as a stereotype." It continues, "a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter." Finally, SCOTUS declared, "Many universities have for too long … concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."

Many states continue to discriminate, blatantly ignoring the Constitution and the SCOTUS SFFA ruling. They use immutable characteristics as a requirement for taxpayer-funded economic grants.

Virginia

The Virginia Teaching Scholarship Loan Program bases its criteria on race and gender. The Virginia Code declares that any student seeking such scholarship must "be a male teacher candidate in an elementary or middle school education program" or be "a minority teacher candidate enrolled in any teacher endorsement area." The term minority is not defined, but it’s likely that if your ancestry is from Europe, or you have light-colored skin, you don’t qualify.

In addition, the state budget gave $800,000 in 2025–2026 for a "fellowship program administered by the Literacy Lab to place recent high-school graduates of a minority background new to the field of education in VPI [Virginia Preschool Initiative] or Head Start classrooms."

The Virginia General Assembly appropriated grant money to subsidize test fees for "provisionally licensed minority teachers seeking full licensure."

Minnesota

A 2025 Minnesota statute directs taxpayer funds to a "Grow Your Own" teacher training program. The program’s grant recipients must be people "of color or American Indian." The state has allotted over $35,000,000 for 2027 grants. White people need not apply.

Missouri

Missouri’s Minority and Underrepresented Environmental Literacy Program offers scholarships for "talented minority and underrepresented individuals." Ethnic groups listed as having "award priority": African American, Hispanic or Latino American, Native American/Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders.

Imagine any of these grants or scholarships having a requirement that the student be Caucasian or European American to qualify. Those conditions would rightly draw condemnation. So why are states continuing to snub their nose at the constitutional requirement of equal protection for all? Is a white child in poverty less worthy than a black child of the same economic status?

In June 2026, the Wisconsin Supreme Court reaffirmed that state-funded grant programs that use race and ethnicity as a factor violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Wisconsin's top court referenced the SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action in SFFA.

Discrimination by Charitable Organizations

The SFFA ruling has broader implications for groups other than just universities, including charitable organizations. Thomas P. Gallanis examines this issue in his 2025 article for the University of Illinois Law Review and argues that "racial discrimination by a charity violates fundamental public policy."

Nonprofits across America continue to discriminate based on race. One such group is the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation that claims to be a non-partisan 501(c)(3) "equal opportunity organization." Yet, they sponsor scholarships and contests that are only eligible to applicants based on race. For example, they hold an essay contest each year for "qualified African-American and Black junior and senior high school students." The caucus also has a visual arts scholarship established in 2006 to "provide financial assistance to African American or Black students pursuing a degree in the visual arts."

Year after year, these nonprofits distribute hundreds, if not thousands, of race-based scholarships.

Gallanis, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, points to Chief Justice Roberts, who in SFFA wrote: "[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies 'without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality'—it is 'universal in [its] application.'" The ruling applied not only to the University of North Carolina, a public university, but also to Harvard University, a private nonprofit institution.

In 1983, SCOTUS upheld the IRS revocation of tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University due to racial discrimination. The school initially prohibited black students, then once black students were finally admitted, it forbade interracial dating.

Chief Justice Burger rightly ruled that "there can no longer be any doubt that racial discrimination in education violates deeply and widely accepted views of elementary justice. Burger noted, "Over the past quarter of a century, every pronouncement of this Court and myriad Acts of Congress and Executive Orders attest a firm national policy to prohibit racial segregation and discrimination in public education."

Gallanis concludes: “The time has come for state and federal courts and taxing authorities to declare that racial discrimination by a charity violates fundamental public policy irrespective of the race of the individuals harmed by it.”

The Constitution does not permit racial discrimination toward any group, no matter a person’s skin color or lineage. The DOJ and IRS should act expediently to end these Jim Crow era practices.

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