Historically Black colleges and universities probably won’t face another legal barrage now that the Supreme Court has eradicated single-gender education at Virginia Military Institute, discrimination law experts say.
However, Black schools that are also single-gender schools could risk losing federal funding received through student loans guaranteed by the government, said Percy Luney, North Carolina Central University Law School dean in Durham. All-male Morehouse College in Atlanta, Spelman College in Atlanta, Bennett College in Greensboro, NC, and other all-female schools across the country, receive federal funding through student loans and government contracts, Luney said.
The legal scholar said an argument could be built against them based on the notion that any type of federal funding, direct or indirect, should be open to scrutiny, if the institution discriminates on the basis of sex. “My gut reaction is that the ruling won’t differentiate between public and private schools. If they are getting federal funding through scholarships you cannot create a program that has an attribute like the military school and not offer it to the other sex,” Luney said.
Morehouse, Spelman and Bennett, although private schools, could be affected by the Supreme Court ruling last week that forces VMI in Lexington, VA and The Citadel in Charleston, SC to accept women into their all-male military colleges or lose state funding.
