College scholarships aimed at students of color, women and others are becoming less common in the face of lawsuits, legal complaints and pressure from the Trump administration.
The National Scholarship Providers Association, which has compiled a database of 33,000 scholarships from a wide range of organizations, found the percentage of scholarships with eligibility requirements for race, ethnicity, gender or other demographic factors has dropped to 11 percent, down from 15 percent in 2023, the year the Supreme Court ruled colleges cannot use race in admissions decisions.
Scholarships are generally not being eliminated, but organizations are instead opening them up to people of any race or gender and using other qualifications to help underrepresented groups, said Jackie Bright, president of the National Scholarship Providers Association, an organization for people working in the scholarship field. For instance, some providers are aiming scholarships toward low-income students or those who are the first in their families to go to college.
“We are seeing a shift,” Bright said.
Conservative activists who have filed lawsuits and complaints to stop colleges, nonprofits, and others from using race and ethnicity as factors in scholarships argue the financial assistance amounts to illegal discrimination.
“For nations such as ours to grow and thrive, race and ethnicity should never be an element in our public policies,” said Edward Blum, who founded the American Alliance for Equal Rights, which has challenged race-based scholarships. He also launched the group behind the lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling barring colleges from considering race in admissions.
But many liberal advocates contend diversity scholarships are still needed to help overcome generations of discrimination and level the playing field for access to academia. They point out that many colleges did not initially admit women or Black students for much of their history.
“It’s not coming out of nowhere,” said Danielle R. Holley, a legal scholar and the president of Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college in Massachusetts. The diversity scholarships are “in response to historic discrimination.”
Holley and other supporters of affirmative action point out that today many selective schools still give preference to descendants of alumni, who have historically been predominantly White. And Black and Latino students are more likely to come from families with fewer financial resources. Federal data shows Black, Hispanic and Native American undergrads were more likely to receive Pell Grants aimed at low-income families than their White peers.
Regardless, the Trump administration has argued civil rights laws bar favoritism on the basis of race or gender and has taken steps to make sure schools follow that interpretation.
In February 2025, the Education Department warned schools they “must cease using race preferences and stereotypes” in scholarships and other areas. (The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups successfully challenged portions of the guidance in court, but the Trump administration has continued to push schools to stop using racial preferences through other efforts.)
Several organizations, including McDonald’s and the San Diego Foundation’s Black Alumni Scholarship Fund, changed their scholarship criteria or agreed to stop using race after lawsuits filed by Blum’s group and others. Illinois repealed the racial eligibility requirements for a scholarship program for aspiring teachers after the state was sued. One of the groups, the American Bar Association, said the changes were already in the works. More lawsuits are still pending.
Blum’s organization is focused on race and ethnicity. But some opponents have pushed organizations to stop giving out scholarships to women and other groups as well.
For instance, a legal scholar filed a complaint against Quinnipiac University’s law school after it received a $500,000 donation for a scholarship to benefit female students, especially those who identify as LGBTQ+ or allies.
The school said it ultimately decided to offer the scholarship to applicants of all genders and sexual orientations “who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing LGBTQIA+ issues.”
Blum’s group and at least one other advocacy group, Do No Harm, have also filed complaints with the IRS about nonprofits that offer race-based scholarships. The complaints cited a 1983 Supreme Court ruling that the IRS could revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that engage in racial discrimination, such as segregation.
One of the nonprofits targeted by Blum’s group, the Gates Foundation, dropped the racial eligibility requirements from its scholarship website after the IRS complaint.
The Gates Foundation said it had already decided internally to make the scholarship available to low-income students who qualified for Pell Grants, rather than underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
The IRS did not respond to questions about whether it has investigated any nonprofits for offering race-based scholarships.
The Education Department pointed to regulations that bar colleges from discriminating based on both race and gender.
Still, attorneys say the laws around scholarship criteria are complex, because different rules apply to different types of institutions. For instance, colleges and other educational organizations that receive federal funds are subject to the Title IX civil rights statute banning sex discrimination, but most private foundations are not.
Many of the lawsuits against nonprofits and companies are based on a separate statute (Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866) that bars racial discrimination in making and enforcing contracts.
“It is a bit complicated from a legal perspective,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, an attorney in Washington, who has worked with tax-exempt organizations for decades and counseled nonprofits about the federal laws covering scholarships.
While the contracting law only bars discrimination based on race and ethnicity, Tenenbaum said it’s also become harder for nonprofits to offer scholarships exclusively for women or men because many colleges and universities won’t accept money where eligibility is restricted by sex due to Title IX.
But changing the scholarship criteria can also create new problems, because nonprofits are obligated to honor any restrictions donors put on the gifts.
In June, the Iowa Supreme Court blocked the University of Iowa from redirecting a private donation meant to help Black students pursuing the physical sciences to one benefiting first-generation students. The court said there wasn’t enough evidence that the new criteria reflected the donor’s wishes and ruled there must be further court proceedings to determine how the funds could be used to abide by both the law and the donor’s intent.
“It’s a tricky line that folks are trying to navigate right now,” said Bright, of the National Scholarship Providers Association.
Bright said changing the criteria can often take a year or more.
In addition, organizations have to be careful not to change the criteria to something that is clearly a “proxy” for race or ethnicity, Tenenbaum said. That could include restricting the scholarships to students attending historically Black colleges, where most of the students are Black.
Similarly, the president of Mount Holyoke College, the oldest of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, said she worries the legal fears around diversity scholarships could also hurt women’s colleges.
If the government stops groups from offering scholarships specifically for women, she fears donations to women’s colleges could be next.
“Because the truth is, if you give money to Mount Holyoke, that means it’s exclusively for people who are of a certain gender,” Holley said.
The post Scholarships for racial minorities and women are disappearing appeared first on Washington Post.
