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Urbana-Champaign's 'diversity of discrimination' with scholarships violates Civil Rights Act: Law professor
A law professor helping push a complaint against the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for 42 “illegal” scholarships that “discriminated” against applicants said it’s “crystal clear” that they violate the Civil Rights Act.
The Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, a civil rights organization, filed the complaint, arguing the scholarships are in violation of Title IX or Title VI.
“We think it’s crystal clear that these do violate the Civil Rights Act,” Cornell Law School professor and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation William Jacobson told Fox News Digital. “For some of them, they use terms like ‘minority,’ and so we have included a definition that the school uses of ‘minority’ to make clear that that is a racial and color designation.”
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Jacobson said the scholarships appear to reflect “a systemic problem” with the university “ignoring the discrimination.”
“The fact that there were so many of them which discriminated in so many different directions,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital. “Men are discriminated against in some of them, women in other ones; Blacks in some, Whites in others. So, it’s a real diversity of discrimination going on that it raised in our mind, what is going on at this university? They could not possibly not have known about it. There is just too many of them.”
He said the preferential scholarships send a message to students not to bother applying.
“Under federal law, the discrimination is the harm. When you set up a barrier based on race or sex, you have harmed people,” Jacobson explained. “Imagine a store that had a sign, ‘No Blacks allowed.’ That is illegal and causes harm in and of itself. It does not matter if someone attempts to enter the store and is turned away by erecting the barrier.”
Jacobson said the hope of the complaint is to stop discrimination and have the Department of Education provide options to students who were barred from applying to preferential scholarships.
“If a scholarship in the past was discriminatory and they only gave one award each year, maybe the school at its own cost needs to increase that to give people who were shut out an extra opportunity to apply,” he explained. “So maybe that scholarship needs to make two, or three, or four awards available, then that would cost the school money, but I think that’s a fair remedy.”
Jacobson said in most cases, when schools are faced with “a clear complaint showing their legal violation,” they do change their eligibility requirements.
“Our first hope is that the University of Illinois, recognizing the major problem that they have, would for each and every one of these scholarships, change the eligibility requirements to open it up to everybody,” he said.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
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NDSU could make the CFP in 2026.
Winning has been the standard at North Dakota State for decades, and one college football analyst expects a similar result in the FBS right away.
Brett McMurphy of On3 believes NDSU will run the table 12-0 with a Mountain West Conference championship and make the College Football Playoff. McMurphy projects the Bison to face Oregon in the CFP, the Fargo Forum’s Jeff Kolpack reported.
That would mean the Bison would go on the road to Eugene against a perennial FBS contender, which didn’t go well for the last Group of Six team to play the Ducks. Oregon steamrolled James Madison 51-34 in last season’s CFP before the Ducks took down Texas Tech and lost to eventual national champion Indiana.
It’s not impossible for the Bison to get that far based on Sagarin Ratings and the program’s history of success against FBS teams. The Bison would need to maximize what they can control and to have a few things fall their way.
That said, all of this would be contingent upon the Bison receiving clearance for postseason competition from the NCAA on Thursday. Transitioning teams normally face a two-year postseason ban, and NDSU had been in a similar situation before, with a four-year postseason ban during the move from Division II to the FCS in 2004.
NDSU Looking to Pass JMU Again
In 2016, the JMU interrupted NDSU’s five-year FCS championship run with a playoff upset at the Fargodome.
NDSU then beat JMU in the 2017 season championship to win a sixth title in seven years. The Bison beat JMU again in the FCS championship game again for the 2019 season before the Dukes joined the FBS in 2022.
JMU’s success at the FBS level has resulted in two bowl game appearances and Sun Belt Conference title. Amid the conference crown, the Dukes slipped into the CFP as the ACC went topsy-turvy when a 5-5 Duke Blue Devils team at the time upset Virginia.
JMU made the CFP, and Miami represented the ACC while Notre Dame sat at home despite a 10-2 record and a close early-season loss to the national runner-up Hurricanes. NDSU, meanwhile, had a 12-0 regular season in the FCS and got stunned in the FCS playoffs by Illinois State, the second team ever to win a playoff game in Fargo.
The Bison looked like a program retooling to get back up from a postseason disappointment in January, but February brought the news of NDSU’s long-anticipated move up to the FBS. The Mountain West Conference invited the Bison amid the conference’s restructuring with five teams leaving for the Pac-12.
That made the former FCS titan attractive to the Mountain West, which notably lost former CFP entrant Boise State. Whether or not NDSU can become the Mountain West’s new Boise State or pass JMU as a premiere Group of Six team remains unknown.
Common Opponents Key For Bison
The Bison have the odds stacked against them in 2026 to make the CFP, but it’s not impossible.
NDSU doesn’t have a Power Four opponent, but the Bison can make up for that by margin of victory, especially with any Mountain West contenders that have Power Four opponents during the season.
New Mexico has the biggest Power Four opponent among Mountain West teams with Oklahoma, and UTEP faces Oklahoma and Michigan. San Jose State faces USC, another team with CFP hopes.
NDSU beating New Mexico, UTEP and San Jose State handily will especially help in making a run for the playoff.
Matthew Davis covers the NFL, WNBA and college sports for Heavy.com. As a contributing writer to the StarTribune, he has also covered Minnesota prep sports since 2016. More about Matthew Davis
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