In 2024, three students at the University of Oklahoma sued the school, alleging that OU officials based scholarship aid on race, violating the constitutional rights of numerous students in the process.

The class-action lawsuit seeks damages for impacted students, alleging OU violated students’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

OU sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that the plaintiffs had not alleged facts establishing that the university intentionally discriminated on the basis of race in awarding financial aid. The university also argued that some of the claims were legally defective because of the way the plaintiffs had brought them against the university and its officials. 

U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick has now declined to dismiss the case. Wyrick concluded that the plaintiffs' factual allegations, accepted as true for purposes of the motion, were sufficient to establish standing.

“The Court therefore accepts the well-pleaded factual allegations as true in determining whether Plaintiffs sufficiently allege standing,” Wyrick wrote.

In their complaint, the three named plaintiffs alleged that “racial preferences continue to exist at the University of Oklahoma” despite prior court rulings, including a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the use of race in college admissions.

As evidence that they say supports their claim of illegal racial discrimination, the plaintiffs’ complaint cited a statistical analysis of publicly available data that “indicates that the University of Oklahoma considers race when awarding financial aid to its students.”

The analysis found that black students were given greater amounts of scholarship aid than similarly situated non-black students, meaning two students from similar economic and social backgrounds received different scholarships based solely on race.

“Based on the University of Oklahoma’s published enrollment data and the financial-aid data that it reported to the Department of Education from 2009 to 2022, statistical analysis shows that black students receive more institutional grant aid from the University of Oklahoma than other students, even when controlling to the extent possible for factors such as family income,” the complaint stated.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, one plaintiff was a senior who transferred to OU after attending community college. She self-identified as white and non-Hispanic when applying for financial aid from OU and received no financial aid from the university. The complaint noted that an official from the University of Oklahoma’s Office of Admissions told the plaintiff that financial aid was generally not available to students like her, but would have been if she were African American.

Another plaintiff was a junior at OU and a first-generation college student. The plaintiff identified himself as white and non-Hispanic when applying for financial aid from the University of Oklahoma. He received a merit scholarship based on his ACT score and GPA in the amount of $1,000 per semester but did not receive any other scholarships or financial aid from OU.

The third plaintiff, at the time an undergraduate student in an accelerated master’s degree program at OU, self-identified as white and non-Hispanic when applying for financial aid from the University of Oklahoma. He received a merit scholarship in the amount of $4,000 per semester and two smaller scholarships totaling $1,000 and $1,750 per year, respectively.

The complaint noted all three would have likely received additional financial aid if not for OU’s allegedly shifting greater amounts of aid to other similarly situated students based on race.

In its 2023 opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions processes for college violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin,” the U.S. Supreme Court opinion stated. “This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The lawsuit filed against OU noted that the university’s alleged race-based financial-aid practices “share all the failings of the race-based admissions practices deemed unlawful in SFFA: they rely on imprecise and irrational categories; they assume that members of each racial group are uniform in their need for financial aid and that such aid will have the same effect on each member of the group; and they rest on the demeaning stereotype that black students need financial aid more than non-black students.”

In the university’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, OU officials also argued the school could not be sued by the plaintiffs because the university is an “arm of the State.”

However, Wyrick noted that under federal law “a State is not immune under the Eleventh Amendment from suit in federal court for a violation of Title VI,” and that relevant sections of federal law do not “preserve Eleventh Amendment immunity” for the University of Oklahoma in this case.

The plaintiffs are represented by Cooper & Kirk, a law firm based in Washington, D.C.

Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs general counsel Ryan Haynie is local counsel for the lawsuit.