The Volokh Conspiracy

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Race Discrimination

Wisconsin S. Ct. Strikes Down Race-Based College Aid Program

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


The decision, in yesterday's Rabiebna v. Higher Ed. Aids Bd., was written by Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler, and joined by Justices Rebecca Grassl Bradley, Brian Hagedorn, and Janet Protasiewicz. The program provided state funds to students who were black; American Indian; Hispanic, meaning "a person of any race whose ancestors originated in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central America or South America or whose culture or origin is Spanish"; or (to oversimplify slightly) of Laotian, Vietnamese, or Cambodian extraction. The opinions are long, but the majority basically applied Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll. (2023).

Justices Jill Karofsky, Susan Crawford, and Rebecca Frank Dallet concurred in the judgment, but expressed their disagreement with SFFA.

Luke Berg, Rick Esenberg, Dan Lennington, and Nathalie Burmeister (Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Inc.) represent plaintiffs.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) for the pointer.

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution. He is also the co-host of the Free Speech Unmuted podcast.