Walmart-backed mentorship program for Arkansas minority students hit with discrimination complaint

Universities began backtracking on their race-conscious initiatives following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, but apparently word of the decision has yet to reach Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The University of Arkansas was hit with a federal civil rights complaint Monday, two weeks after announcing the BIPOC Mentor Circle Series, a program cosponsored by Walmart and Sam’s Club designed to give a leg up to minority students seeking jobs at the companies.

“The BIPOC Mentor Circle violates Title VI because it conditions eligibility for participation on a student’s race, ethnicity and skin color,” said William Jacobson, president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, which filed the complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“And, because U of A is a public university, its sponsorship, promotion and hosting of this discriminatory program also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” he said.

The complaint quotes liberally from SFFA v. Harvard, the June 2023 decision holding that race-based collegiate admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause, a decision that prompted universities and even private companies to pull back on racially designated programs and advancement opportunities.

The University of Arkansas went the opposite direction, unveiling on Sept. 9 the initiative developed by the UA Black Graduate Student Association offering “a new recruitment pipeline for internships and entry level roles in merchandising and other corporate areas.”

As the application makes clear, however, White students need not apply.

The form requires applicants to identify their race and ethnicity by checking one of four categories: “Black/African American/African,” “Indigenous/Native American,” “Person of Color” and “Other.”

The application includes an essay question asking students to describe “a challenge you have faced as a BIPOC individual in your professional or academic journey and how you overcame it.”

Mr. Jacobson said “U of A knows better than to run a program that excludes and discriminates against students based on race and ethnicity.”

The complaint said that “based on the requirement that participating students be BIPOC, the campus meetings would be de facto segregated by race, skin color, and ethnicity.”

“Any reasonable student viewing the information on the U of A website would understand the racially exclusionary basis of the program, and non-BIPOC students would be dissuaded from even applying or attempting to participate,” said Mr. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor.

John Thomas, University of Arkansas director of media relations and core communications, said the complaint is under review.

“We are reviewing this matter, which involves a registered student organization initiative,” he said in an email. “The University is fully committed to ensuring that all members of the University community can fully participate in its programs and activities without regard to race or ethnicity, and requires the same of UA student organizations.”

Launched in February 2023, the foundation’s Equal Protection Project has filed 43 federal complaints challenging race-based initiatives at educational institutions. In 20 of those cases, the school either dropped or changed the program.

Earlier this month, the project filed a complaint against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, challenging the Minnesota Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship, which “openly discriminates based on race and skin color,” Mr. Jacobson said.