Community colleges in San Diego and Imperial County are sounding the alarm over a federal lawsuit targeting federal support for colleges that serve Latino students.
The suit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative legal activist group that sued Harvard University over its admissions practices and led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action two years ago.
This time, the group is challenging the constitutionality of the federal Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) program. The program grants additional federal funding to colleges and universities where more than a quarter of students identify as Latino.
At a news conference at Southwestern College in Chula Vista on Thursday morning, community college officials said the lawsuit threatened more than $15 million in annual funding for their schools.
“If this access is lost or delayed, the cost will be immediate and widespread,” said Lynn Neault, chancellor of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. “It will mean fewer nurses, fewer firefighters, fewer teachers, fewer technology professionals and on and on.”
Mercedes Robles, the student representative on Southwestern College’s governing board, said the lawsuit felt especially threatening coming against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“This is just very targeting,” she said. “Towards our Hispanic community, towards our immigrant community.”
There are over 600 federally-designated Hispanic Serving colleges and universities across the country. California is home to the largest number of any state — more than 170 — followed by Texas, New York and Illinois.
Students for Fair Admissions filed its lawsuit back in June in a federal court in Tennessee. The state of Tennessee is also a plaintiff in the case. Their suit claims the HSI program amounts to racial discrimination and asks the court to declare it unconstitutional.
Earlier this summer, the Department of Justice also said it would not defend the program against the lawsuit in court.
At Thursday’s news conference, Southwestern College Governing Board Don Dumas said he had seen the importance of programs like the HSI funding firsthand as a former ethnic studies teacher. He said the Trump administration’s decision threatened the future of the program.
“That may sound like Washington politics,” Dumas said. “But here at home, it determines whether our students have the support they need to succeed.”
Southwestern College President Mark Sanchez said his school receives about $4.5 million in HSI funding — around 2% of Southwestern’s $220 million annual budget.
Sanchez said community college officials were preparing for the possibility of losing the funding.
“The state — to the state legislature's credit — has created a block grant fund for community colleges to be able to backfill some of these potential funding losses,” he said.
The lawsuit is part of a broader effort by conservative activists to eliminate all federal efforts to address a history of systemic racism in the U.S.
