Lawsuit threatens Illinois minority teachers scholarship

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed continuing funding for a program aimed at getting more minority teachers in classrooms as a conservative legal strategist challenges the programs constitutionality in federal court.

In his proposed budget for the fiscal year of 2026, which begins July 1, Pritzker proposed $8 million to go toward the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship Program.

This scholarship program, which has received the same funding for the past two fiscal years, is the subject of a federal lawsuit in the Central District of Illinois court. The American Alliance for Equal Rights, a Texas-based organization whose mission is “to challenge racial classifications and racial preferences in America,” filed the suit in October.

AAER is led by Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist who largely led the legal effort that resulted in the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning affirmative action-based decisions in college admissions programs.

The lawsuit names Pritzker and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission as defendants. It seeks to declare the race-based portion of the MTI Scholarship Program unconstitutional and prohibit the state from enforcing it.

AAER, a member-based organization, argues that it has “one or more members” who are Illinois residents who would otherwise qualify for the scholarships but are barred from the program because they are not a member of a racial minority. The suit cites an unidentified “Member A,” who it says is a high school student interested in pursuing a career in education but cannot apply for a scholarship because of their race.

AAER is represented in the suit by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on “individual liberty” and promotes itself as “suing the government since 1973.”

Due to the anonymous subject listed in the lawsuit, the state has moved to dismiss the case from the central district court. Filed in December, the state’s motion argues that the plaintiff’s organization “relies on an injury allegedly suffered by a single unnamed member.”

The scholarship program was created in 1992 to increase the number of bilingual and non-white teachers in the state. It grants recipients up to $7,500 per school year for four years of higher education. While in school the money helps with the cost of tuition, room and board, fees or commuter expenses. Upon receiving their teacher licensure, recipients are meant to work at a nonprofit K-12 school in the state with at least 20 English learners or a 30% minority student population.

Since its creation, about 13,700 Illinois high school seniors have received this scholarship, according to Chalkbeat. The program has assisted the growth in entry rates for teachers and administrators of color in various school districts.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, educators of color made up less than 20% of all teachers, while students of color comprise an average of 54% of all students in K-12 grades across the state.

Deputy Superintendent of Rock Island-Milan School District Jeff Dase is a previous recipient of the scholarship. Dase credits his ongoing K-12 education career to this scholarship and others given to him to attend Chicago State University.

“That’s how I ended up in education, because that fulfilled my goal. My parents didn’t have to go into debt,” Dase said. “(The scholarship) just helps out, because a lot of minorities, especially Black males, are deterred from school and higher education at an early stage, so to give some assistance draws more people to that avenue.”

Advance Illinois, a public education advocacy group, is just one organization speaking out against the lawsuit.

“The reason that a diverse educator pipeline is important, specifically when we look at Illinois, I think our educator workforce is not representative of our student body,” said Maty Ortega Cruz, senior community engagement associate at Advance Illinois.

Ortega Cruz said there are an increasing number of barriers to becoming an educator, including the rising cost of higher education. She said Advance Illinois organized a briefing about the lawsuit following the October filing.

“We were joined by 100 partners – 100 attendees, so that alone shows how important, how meaningful and how impactful the program is to other people who do this work,” Ortega Cruz said.

Illinois legislators in January passed House Resolution 942, which urges the state to continue administering and supporting the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship Program, on a 76-18 vote. In hopes of passing a resolution of the same means and language in the state Senate, Majority Leader Kimberly A. Lightford, D-Maywood, introduced Senate Resolution 117 on Feb 18.

Ortega Cruz said HR 942 was championed by members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus who reiterated how the scholarship helps close the representation gap in the education workforce.

“There is a very, very small population of Black men in schools across the United States,” said Djimon Smith, dean of students at Central Middle School in Evergreen Park and president of the Black Male Educators Alliance Illinois Chapter. “We want to increase that. We work to recruit and retain Black male educators. It’s very important to us that there are Black males in the classroom to change lots of systemic barriers and things that impact Black students.”

As of 2024, according to the Illinois Report Card, 6.4% of teachers in the state were Black, with African American men making up less than half of that number.

Dase, who is also a member of the alliance’s Illinois chapter, says the scholarship program is an incentive for college students of color to go into the education field.

“It gives you that indirect message of saying we want you, so I think that matters to a lot of people,” Dase said. “It gives you some sense of a commitment to give back, because you’ve already been invested in, with this monetary award.”

Other state-funded scholarship programs in Pritzker’s budget proposal that focus on education career pathways include the Golden Apple Scholarship of Illinois, open to all high school seniors through college sophomores in the state, and the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Program, meant to increase minority full-time tenure track faculty and staff at two and four-year colleges and universities in the state.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.