Taxpayer Lawsuit Topples Race Gatekeeping

A judge's gavel being raised in a courtroom setting

Wisconsin’s highest court just killed a race-based college grant that shut out some poor kids purely because they were the “wrong” color.

Story Snapshot

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court struck down a state grant that awarded college aid based on race and ancestry, not equal treatment.
The program barred needy students who were white, Middle Eastern, or from many Asian backgrounds from even applying.^[1]
Justices relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions ruling, extending it to state aid programs.^[4]
The unanimous decision is a major win for colorblind law and a warning to other race-based benefits.^[7]

Race-Exclusive Grants Finally Face Equal-Protection Reality

For nearly forty years, Wisconsin’s Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program handed out tax-funded college aid, but only if a student fit into a narrow list of preferred racial and ethnic categories.^[1] The law limited eligibility to students who were Black American, American Indian, Hispanic, or of Laotian, Cambodian, or Vietnamese ancestry admitted to the United States after 1975.^[2] A white student, a Middle Eastern student, or a Chinese American student with the exact same financial need was automatically shut out.^[1]

A group of taxpayers, backed by a conservative public-interest firm, sued the state’s Higher Educational Aids Board, which ran the grants.^[1] They argued that the program violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by giving state money to some races while denying others any chance to compete.^[1] The Wisconsin Court of Appeals agreed, ruling in 2025 that the grant law was unconstitutional on its face and ordering the program to stop.^[1] That ruling set the stage for review by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.^[5]

How Courts Used Strict Scrutiny To Take the Program Apart

The appeals court applied “strict scrutiny,” the toughest standard courts use when government treats people differently by race, national origin, or ancestry.^[1] Under that test, the state must prove both a compelling interest and narrow tailoring—meaning it must show a vital goal and that race-based lines are the only realistic way to reach it.^[4] The court held that Higher Educational Aids Board failed both prongs, so the law could not stand under the United States Constitution.^[4]

State officials tried to defend the program as a small, need-based tool to fix what they called a “crisis in education” for certain minority groups.^[7] They said lawmakers wanted to boost retention and graduation rates at private and technical colleges for students in the preferred categories.^[7] But the opinion notes the state did not prove that such a crisis actually existed when the law was created, or that the legislature adopted the grants to cure specific, documented discrimination.^[4] That gap in evidence was fatal to the claim that the program served a compelling interest.^[4]

Why Students for Fair Admissions Loomed Over Wisconsin’s Case

The Wisconsin courts leaned heavily on the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision, which struck down race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.^[9] In that case, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that race-based admissions policies violated the Equal Protection Clause because they used race as a negative, relied on stereotypes, and lacked clear, measurable goals or end points.^[9] Wisconsin judges read that ruling as a strong warning to any government program that uses race as a gatekeeper.^[4]

The appeals court pointed out that, unlike the admissions systems in Students for Fair Admissions, Wisconsin’s grant program did not even pretend to look at each student as an individual.^[1] The statute used an “absolute racial classification” that made race or ancestry the deciding factor—either you were in a favored group and could receive aid, or you were categorically barred.^[1] The court also stressed that financial aid is a zero-sum resource: giving money only to preferred races necessarily harms those excluded, even if schools say other funds might help them.^[1]

Unanimous High Court Ruling Signals a Broader Shift

When the case reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the justices unanimously agreed that the grant program could not be squared with equal protection.^[6] Reports note that the high court accepted the appeals court’s key conclusion: government cannot hand out taxpayer money by sorting students into racial boxes, even when officials say they want to help underrepresented groups.^[6] The decision confirms that Students for Fair Admissions is not limited to admissions; it reaches scholarships, grants, and other benefits built on racial lines.^[7]

A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling has struck down a state scholarship program that provided aid to students based on race and ethnicity, finding it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

State lawmakers are already debating possible alternatives based on… pic.twitter.com/HpzySjuhA2

— The Center Square (@thecentersquare) June 19, 2026

For conservatives, this ruling is a clear step back toward the Constitution’s promise that every person is treated as an individual, not as a member of a racial group. It also serves as a warning to other states and colleges that still run race-based aid or “equity” funds. Programs that pick winners and losers by skin color, heritage, or birthplace now face a steep legal climb. Lawmakers who want to help struggling students will need to focus on true need, not identity politics.