Two private California universities are facing a civil rights complaint for allegedly sponsoring and facilitating a program that limits participation to students who only identify as Hispanic.
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) is demanding the US Department of Education to investigate whether USC and Loyola Marymount University (LMU) violated federal civil rights laws by participating in the Youth Leadership Institute — a college-access and leadership-development program for Latino students, according to the complaint obtained by The Post.
“That program discriminates on its face and unequivocally on the basis of national origin,” William Jacobson, president and founder of EPP said.
“The universities get involved and potentially become responsible because they support it, they host it on their campuses, they provide all sorts of other facilities for it.”
The complaint alleges the universities are violating Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin by offering to host, provide speakers, and on-campus housing for YLI events because it excludes students who are not of Hispanic-heritage.
Jacobson points out that even though the universities are private, they still receive some federal funding and are subject to federal civil rights law.
“If this had simply been an outside nonprofit unrelated to the universities, runs a program off the university campus, they wouldn’t be responsible,” Jacobson said. “Because the universities have voluntarily taken on the burden of promoting the programs, supporting the programs, hosting the programs, providing lodging for participants in the programs they now fully adopted this as their program.”
LMU, which describes itself as a sponsor and host of the program, recently held an in-person event for YLI from June 24 to June 28 while USC is scheduled to host its own YLI overnight component in July, according to the complaint.
YLI is a program of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which administers and operates the program. It has been praised by both universities for boosting admission for Latino students, and described as “educational partners” by USC.
The complaint further argues both universities are in violation of Title II by restricting on-campus lodging to only Hispanic students as it relates to the program.
“We think this is pretty egregious. It’s open discrimination, they don’t try to hide it,” Jacobson told the Post. “The program says it’s only open to students who identify as Hispanic, only those students can participate in these events on campus and by definition, if those are the only students who can participate, those are the only ones who can receive the benefit of temporary housing.”
Jacobson is calling on the DOE to investigate the alleged Title IV violations, while the Title II complaint would fall under the DOJ due to a new intra-agency partnership between the two federal agencies that changed how federal civil rights complaints are handled
USC and LMU are not the only California institutions coming under fire over federal civil rights violations — back in May, the Department of Justice sued the University of California Los Angeles for its “deliberate indifference to race and national origin discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students” on campus.
Earlier this month, the DOJ launched an investigation into four California public school districts for allegedly violating Title XI by teaching students about sexual orientation and gender ideology under the guise of “LGBTQ history and social studies” while failing to notify parents.
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