An alum who earned a master’s degree in education at the Tampa, Florida, campus of Puerto Rico-based Sistema Universitario Ana G. Mendez (SUAGM) can pursue her discrimination suit accusing the school of targeting low-income Latinos for its “sham” academic programs, a federal judge has ruled.
Although SUAGM is a nonprofit that operates three universities in Puerto Rico, it has outsourced operation of its U.S. programs, including the Tampa program, to an unaccredited for-profit company, Agmus Ventures Inc., the suit alleges. Agmus isn’t a defendant in the case.
The suit alleges that recent immigrants account for most of the students targeted by the school’s marketing and that SUAGAM “targets this population because it believes they are unsophisticated, do not understand English and do not understand how the educational and legal systems work in the U.S.,” U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. wrote in his opinion.
Moody said Brook presented enough evidence to proceed on her Title VI claim of ethnic or national origin discrimination.
“It is the combination of the targeted advertising and the allegedly ‘sham’ educational program that allows the court to infer intentional discrimination,” he wrote. “The discrimination claim from the harmful product being peddled; the targeted advertising simply helps to prove that the discrimination was intentional.”
Moody also allowed Brook to revise her Equal Credit Opportunity Act claim to detail allegedly discriminatory aspects of her loan transactions.
