Midwest
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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Michigan
Does Kyle Whittingham face ‘win now’ pressure at Michigan?
For some programs, spring football has started in earnest, but for Michigan football, it will have to wait another week. But with practices on the horizon, college football pundits are starting to ask questions about what the upcoming season may look like, and among the questions is what Kyle Whittingham’s Wolverines will be in his first year.
On3’s popular show ‘Ari & Andy’ attempted to ask and answer that question on their latest episode.
As the duo of Ari Wasserman and Andy Staples mulled over various storylines in the coaching realm, once they got to the ‘newcomers’ — coaches who have taken over new programs — they started with Whittingham. For Wasserman, the big question is how quickly Whittingham can win in Ann Arbor?
“How much pressure is Kyle Whittingham to make sure that Michigan doesn’t lose whatever momentum that it had from winning the national championship and falling back into another 25 year period of being pretty good, but not great?” Wasserman said. “Because on one hand, this is a very critical moment in their program arc. But on the other hand, don’t you also have to give him the benefit of the doubt that, hey, what happened at the end of or during last year was highly dysfunctional in a way that we don’t really see very often in sports in general, let alone college sports? And you got hired during a weird time on the calendar. You probably weren’t anticipating coaching this year.
“Like, do you get a year to try to get your bearings of a new place that expects to win a championship? Like, I don’t know how Michigan fans are viewing this season. Now you’ll tell me what you always tell me. They demand excellence, and they expect excellence. There’s no honeymoon. I think that’s true. But from a rational analysis of this, I don’t know how to view what the (expectations are), like what is a successful season for Kyle Whittingham in year one, make the playoff?”
Staples is a little less about the questions and more about the answers. Because in his mind, regardless of how he got there, Whittingham to Michigan might be the best hire of the entire cycle.
“This really isn’t about Michigan’s expectations. It’s more about Kyle Whittingham’s expectations,” Staples said. “And the fact that Kyle Whittingham did this and the fact that Michigan did this, this was Michigan going out and getting the best coach they could get. But it’s very interesting because let’s say Michigan had fired Sherrone Moore in a more conventional way. And it had been just for losing and had been at the end of the season. And Kyle Whittingham had been one of the coaches that was available, but one of many that was available that the whole cycle hadn’t already been done. I still would have called hiring Kyle Whittingham, maybe the best hire of the cycle. I don’t think a 66-year-old guy goes to this place to build, to rebuild it. He’s going to win now. That’s the whole point of this. He’s not doing this except it is to win now.”
Minnesota
Proposal would ban crypto ATMs in Minnesota
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) – ATMs that deal in cryptocurrency could be banned in Minnesota soon.
Crypto ATM ban considered
The backstory:
Police across the state are urging lawmakers to pass a DFL ban on those kiosks that convert cash to crypto.
They say the machines are used extensively by criminals trying to scam people or to hide the proceeds of their crimes. In 2024, lawmakers passed a law to regulate the machines. Still, last year Attorney General Keith Ellison warned of an increase in crypto ATM scams.
At a hearing last month, Faribault police reported their residents had lost $500,000 since 2022 from crypto ATM scams. Woodbury Detective Lynn Lawrence told lawmakers about a victim she helped who had completed at least ten Bitcoin transactions over six months at crypto ATMs.
By the numbers:
Right now there are about 350 crypto kiosks in the state. They are often located in gas stations and grocery stores.
Their owners say this proposed law goes too far, but they’d support a law requiring full refunds for any customers who were victims of fraud.
How crypto ATMs work
Dig deeper:
Crypto ATMs allow users to turn fiat money into digital currency or vice versa. Users typically have to scan their identification to be able to use the machines and then the currency is sent to a wallet of their choosing.
However, the machines are increasingly used by scammers who convince elderly victims to use the ATMs to use the machines to send them money. Once the money is sent, it’s impossible to recoup the funds from the scammers.
Exchanges can blacklist scammers’ wallets and block them from withdrawing ill-gotten funds. However, most scammers will use “mixers” which wash the funds through a service that makes the coins hard to track or find ways around large exchanges like decentralized exchanges and peer-to-peer exchanges.
The other side:
At a hearing on Tuesday, Larry Lipka, counsel for digital currency platform CoinFlip, which operates 50 crypto ATMs in Minnesota, recognized scams are an issue, but pointed out scamming won’t disappear if crypto kiosks are banned.
“While I understand that scams are a problem, scams are a problem everywhere in this country,” said Lipka, “They are a problem for crypto kiosks, they are a problem for wire transfers, and they are a problem for gift cards. But no one is here today saying we should ban exchanges or gift cards or wire transfers because scammers use them.”
Instead of a ban, Lipka urged lawmakers to instead consider smarter and better controls for kiosks. According to Lipka, back in 2024, CoinFlip pushed for further protections when the previous crypto ATM bill was being discussed, arguing that legislation didn’t go far enough.
Missouri
Missouri Supreme Court hears arguments on congressional redistricting map – Missourinet
The Missouri Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether the so-called “Missouri First” map is unconstitutional.
The map, passed by Republican lawmakers in September and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe, stretches the boundaries of the 5th Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold, eastward into heavily Republican regions of the state. It also moves part of the current 5th District into the 4th and 6th districts, currently represented by Republican congressmen Mark Alford and Sam Graves. Incumbent Democrat Emanuel Cleaver is running for reelection in the 5th District.
Opponents of the Missouri First map’s main argument focused on the map being passed by lawmakers without any new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The congressional boundaries tossed out by the Missouri First map were based on the 2020 U.S. Census.
Attorney Chuck Hatfield represents those challenging the new map passed by Republican lawmakers last fall.
“The whole idea is tethered to the census data. You must do it at the census, and you only do it at the census,” Hatfield told the High Court. “The court’s precedents also support this.”
Solicitor General Louis Capozzi, representing the Missouri Sec. of State’s office, disagreed, saying the Missouri Constitution is silent on mid-decade redistricting.
“Mid-decade redistricting had happened in Missouri in the 1870s, and mid-decade redistricting was common around the country in the first half of the 20th century,” he argued. “Article III, Section 45 of the Missouri Constitution sets out only three requirements for the redistricting of seats in Missouri, ‘The district shall be composed of contiguous territory, as compact, and as nearly equal in population as may be.’ And as long as the General Assembly complies with those three rules, this court said that Missouri courts, ‘shall respect the political determinations of the General Assembly.’”
Meanwhile, roughly a hundred demonstrators held signs across the street from the Missouri Supreme Court building, condemning the Missouri First map and calling for the Missouri Supreme Court to strike it down.
“Voters should choose our politicians,” said Missouri League of Women Voters Director Kay Park. “The League (of Women Voters) believes redistricting should keep communities of similar culture and race together to strengthen their vote and promote partisan fairness.”
The Missouri Supreme Court will rule on the congressional district map later.
Copyright © 2026 · Missourinet
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