A group determined to end racial affirmative action programs has filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in hope of ending its scholarship program for minority students who want to become teachers.
“Illinois can offer assistance to young, aspiring teachers, but not when they exclude a significant number of applicants based on their skin color,” said attorney Erin Wilcox of the Pacific Legal Foundation. “The exclusion of non-minority applicants not only misses the mark on providing an equal opportunity for all future teachers, it violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.” Â
The Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship Program awards scholarships of up to $7,500 a year for as many as four years. The lawsuit is being brought by the American Alliance for Equal Rights, a Virginia-based group that has filed multiple lawsuits across the U.S. designed to end affirmative action programs.
Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the group at no charge, litigated a case against Harvard University last year that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ending racial preferences in university admissions.
“Chief Justice (John) Roberts said that the answer to discrimination is not more discrimination. If you’re trying to fix past racial discrimination, you don’t do it with a law that also keeps some people out because of their skin color,” attorney Wilcox said.
The scholarship program, which was created in 1992, is only open to Black, Hispanic, Asian American or Native American students. Wilcox contends this is unfair to white students.
A white high school senior who plans to pursue an education degree is among those challenging the scholarship’s racial restrictions. The student is a member of the American Alliance for Equal Rights.Â
But Teresa Haley, past president of the Illinois NAACP, said such arguments miss the mark because the purpose of such scholarships is to increase the number of positive role models for minority children.
“It is important for us to continue to recruit minority students into the teaching program because … to have a teacher or administrator that looks like you is very encouraging,” she said. “It is very motivating. It gives you the confidence that you can be more than just the janitor or cook at a school. So, for Black and brown children to see teachers and administrators who look like them, it gives them hope.”
Awards made under the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship Program are “intended to help diversify the teaching pool and provide a supply of well-qualified and diverse teachers for hard-to-staff schools,” the scholarship’s website says.
“The program was also created with a goal of narrowing the achievement gap associated with race, based in part on theories that minority children may perform better if some of their teachers are members of racial/ethnic minority groups,” the website adds.
According to the lawsuit, the white student who brought the case has received other scholarships but will still pay about $22,000 out of more than $40,000 in college tuition and fees for the 2024-25 school year.
Ed Blum, president of the American Alliance for Equal Rights, told Illinois Times the student plaintiff is not identified in the lawsuit because of fears she would face retaliation from peers as well as professors committed to promoting affirmative action.
Blum declined to comment further for the record.
Tina Freeman, a Black teacher at Jefferson Middle School, said Illinois needs not just more minority teachers, but more qualified teachers of all races.
“Scholarships for minorities is based on a long-standing divide in this country, between those who have – most likely white – and those who don’t have – most likely Blacks and other minorities,” said Freeman, who chairs the Equity Committee for the Springfield Education Association.
But she added it may be time to expand the teacher scholarships to include white students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“An African American teacher is likely to better understand what an African American student is going through from morning to night into the next morning. It could be that a Caucasian teacher understands that. It could be that a Latino does,” Freeman said. “We all have different experiences, and we can’t put (it out as) a blanket situation. No race has the lock on a particular experience of life. … Whites have it better than most minorities. That’s what’s been told to us. But that’s not everybody’s experience.”
Pacific Legal Foundation has filed multiple lawsuits challenging admissions policies at charter or magnet schools.
But the lawsuit filed recently in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, AAER v. Pritzker, is among the first that could affect teacher education programs.
A representative of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment from IT.
“An award from the scholarship program would significantly defray the plaintiff’s costs,” the lawsuit says. “Except for her race,” according to the lawsuit, the unidentified plaintiff “is qualified, ready, willing and able to apply to the scholarship program.”
This article appears in This I believe Illinois.
Calling this “unfair to white students” is willfully ignorant. This argument reflects “colonizer thinking”—the idea that if minorities gain the same opportunities, they’ll treat white people as white people treated them.
Intersectional theory shows that injustice isn’t simply additive; it compounds. Being Black, Asian, or Hispanic multiplies the barriers you face. I’m white and come from real poverty, yet my skin color gave me advantages others didn’t have simply because they were people of color.
This scholarship isn’t about exclusion; it’s about building a diverse teaching workforce, which has been shown to benefit all students.
Because a person has a specific skin color, should not include or exclude their eligibility for ANY program.