An Uncertain Future for HSIs

Hispanic-serving institutions find themselves in a precarious position after news broke Friday that the Department of Justice won’t defend them from a recent lawsuit. The lawsuit—filed by the state of Tennessee and the group Students for Fair Admissions—deemed the HSI program “unconstitutional” and “discriminatory” for requiring institutions to enroll at least 25 percent Hispanic students to qualify for specific federal grants.

The complaint lists the Education Department and Education Secretary Linda McMahon as defendants, but the DOJ has no plans to fight the legal challenge on their behalf, according to a July 25 letter from U.S. solicitor general D. John Sauer to House Speaker Mike Johnson, first reported by The Washington Free Beacon. Sauer agreed with the plaintiffs that the program “violates the Constitution.”

The DOJ’s move thrusts HSIs into a moment of acute uncertainty. Of the roughly 600 HSIs across the country, 236 are community colleges and 191 are public four-year institutions, according to 2023–24 data from the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, which represents HSIs. While some HSIs are well-to-do research institutions, a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that, as a group, they wrestle with extensive infrastructure needs and delayed campus repairs. Now competitive federal grants to these institutions, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars per year, are at risk.

David Mendez, HACU’s interim chief executive officer, called the DOJ’s decision “troubling,” “unjust” and ultimately harmful to students. He argued that HSIs’ 25 percent enrollment threshold is used to allocate resources to institutions, not to “exclude, stigmatize or prefer individual applicants.” He also said the complaint the DOJ is backing is “legally unsound” because Congress—not a federal agency—established the program.

Last month, HACU filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit, arguing that Trump’s Education Department was unlikely to defend the program. Neither the department nor the plaintiffs have opposed HACU’s effort to be named as a defendant, though U.S. District Court judge Katherine A. Crytzer has yet to rule on the motion.

But Mendez said his current focus is on educating policymakers and the public about the constitutionality of HSIs and their impact.

HSIs disproportionately serve first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students, he said. “Those funds have been devoted to ensure their success, to ensure that they receive all the necessary support … That’s why HACU remains committed to preserving and protecting the program. It is necessary for all students to succeed and to thrive.”

Some Democratic lawmakers are also pushing back against the DOJ’s plan to leave the HSI program defenseless against its legal challengers.

On Friday, Rep. Greg Stanton, an Arizona Democrat, posted on X that the DOJ “abandoned” HSIs, such as Arizona State University, “where 30,000+ Latinos are building their futures.”

“This is an attack on Arizona’s largest university, on Latino students, and on opportunity itself,” Stanton wrote. “I’ll fight it every step of the way.”

Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, similarly urged the Trump administration on social media to “immediately reverse course” and defend HSIs, including the five in her state. She called the DOJ’s move a “disastrous attempt to undermine the Hispanic community … and place barriers against their success.”

‘Our Fight Is Only Beginning’

Now that the DOJ has sided with the plaintiffs, what happens next remains hazy. HSI supporters say it’s unclear whether the lawsuit, if successful, would change HSIs’ criteria or end the program wholesale.

Andrés Castro Samayoa, associate professor of higher education at Boston College, said the future of HSIs—and other kinds of minority-serving institutions—is hard to predict in light of the latest developments.

The HSI program is slated to dole out $350 million in fiscal year 2025–26, and institutions have already applied for the grants. But Castro Samayoa said it’s hard to know what will happen to that money now that the program’s continued existence has been thrown into question.

“The timeline of this is really messy,” he said.

He also sees the targeting of HSIs, and the government’s reticence to defend them, as part of a “broader effort to try to undo any type of race-conscious or race-aware allocation of resources,” akin to cuts to federal research funds perceived as related to DEI. And in that overall onslaught against higher ed, “what we consistently see is that precedent no longer really matters,” compounding uncertainty, he said.

“This is part of an ongoing effort that has been pretty fastidious in its attempts to try to really cut back on any of the gains that I think that we’ve made over the past few decades of understanding that racially aware ways of apportioning resources is a pathway towards greater educational equity,” he said.

Gina Ann Garcia, a professor who studies MSIs in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, said if the federal government intends to end the HSI program, she doesn’t believe it will be easy, because it’s enshrined in the Higher Education Act. Nonetheless, she’s alarmed by the executive branch’s swift agreement with the lawsuit and worries about the broader implications for other types of MSIs with enrollment-based criteria.

For example, predominantly Black institutions earn their designation partly by enrolling 40 percent Black students and half low-income and first-generation students. Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving Institutions must serve 10 percent of students from these specific backgrounds and half low-income students. She fears that if the government is targeting HSIs for their enrollment threshold, other kinds of MSIs are next in line.

“MSIs are part of the civil rights movement; they are a movement to address past historical harms towards people of color,” Garcia said. “If they attack one, then it’s likely that they’re going to keep attacking … It opens up vulnerability to all of our MSI types that fall under the Higher Education Act. I think our fight is only beginning.”

(This article has been updated to correct the spelling of David Mendez's name.)