Florida A&M Students Allege State has Knowingly Underfunded Historically Black Colleges, Universities

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Florida A&M University students have filed a proposed class action lawsuit in which they allege the Board of Governors for the State University System of Florida has racially discriminated against historically Black colleges and universities by intentionally providing the institutions with less funding than their traditionally white counterparts.

According to the 26-page lawsuit, the board of governors, chancellor Marshall M. Criser III, and the state of Florida have failed to satisfy their obligations under a 1998 agreement between the state and the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, whereby Florida agreed to increase access for minority students at all levels of education. The agreement also required Florida to dismantle its “segregated system of higher learning” after the Office of Civil Rights found that the state was “deficient in access, retention/graduation, and financing for and of minority students,” the case relays. 

Although the defendants issued a report in 2003 in which they claimed to have checked all of the boxes specified by their agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, the reality to date is that historically Black colleges and universities, including Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), are far from “complete parity” with historically white institutions, the complaint alleges. 

“Throughout its history, Florida has systematically engaged in policies and practices that established and perpetuated, and continue to perpetuate, a racially segregated system of higher education,” the filing charges. 

Following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, which held that segregated school systems were unconstitutional, Florida “did nothing more than lift the rule excluding Black students from admission to [traditionally white institutions],” the suit says. 

The lawsuit further argues that in light of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and U.S. v. Fordice, a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that highlighted the steps states must take to “dismantle the de jure segregation of education systems,” Florida is obligated to change any policies and practices that are traceable to the formerly segregated higher education system. 

Under the agreement with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, the defendants agreed to complete construction on at least two FAMU buildings and finish capital construction projects for a number of academic departments, the suit says. The defendants also agreed to request funding to augment Florida A&M’s programs and activities in certain areas and enhance the core functions of the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as request appropriate funding for outreach scholarships and develop and implement undergraduate and graduate academic programs to strengthen and broaden the school’s offerings, the complaint says.

As the case tells it, however, the defendants have “failed to enhance FAMU to make it as attractive and welcoming as geographically-proximate Florida [traditionally white institutions],” with physical improvements and capital projects at historically Black schools such as FAMU taking “an average of ten years longer” to complete than those at their white counterparts. 

“This is demonstrative of Defendants’ lack of good faith towards these improvements,” the lawsuit alleges, claiming a lack of funding, failure to improve facilities, and practice of unnecessarily duplicating unique programs at FAMU have perpetuated segregation at the school and similar historically Black institutions and kept them from parity with traditionally white schools. 

The lawsuit explains that program duplication, i.e., when two geographically close institutions offer the same nonessential or non-core programs, is essentially “part and parcel of the prior dual system of higher education” wherein the notion of “separate but equal” required duplicative programs in two sets of schools. 

At present, unnecessary academic program duplication is socially and economically harmful, in part because the greater the duplication, the less likely it is that quality programs can be adequately supported since resources must be “spread out over more programs,” the case states. 

According to the suit, the defendants have since 1982 duplicated FAMU’s unique programs at traditionally white institutions that are geographically close “without sound educational justification” for doing so. For example, the case says, the state approved a joint program in engineering at Florida State University (FSU) through which students, who are either enrolled in FAMU or FSU, complete undergraduate courses at their home school and then attend degree-specific classes at a shared building. The suit claims, however, that ever since the program began, there has been “a declining population of FAMU students and an increasing population of FSU students” in the joint college. 

According to the suit, the “joint college” is an example of how Florida A&M has been “stripped and robbed of resources and programs” for the eventual benefit of traditionally white institutions. 

According to the filing, Florida has failed to enhance the facilities at Florida A&M and similar historically Black institutions “until there is parity” with traditionally white schools. With regard to facilities, the case alleges the defendants have continually failed to provide “appropriate contracts, contractors, supplies, and appropriations” for the timely completion of projects at Florida A&M, which the suit says is dealing with an on-campus housing shortage. 

Further, the case contends that the defendants’ performance-based metric system for awarding money “unfairly compares schools that serve student populations of different socioeconomic backgrounds.”  

The lawsuit also says that although the overall percentage of Black students graduating from public colleges and universities in Florida is increasing, the gap between graduation rates for white and Black students is “widening.” 

The lawsuit looks to cover all current Florida A&M University students at any time during the 2021-2022 school year through the date of class certification. 

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