The Trump administration's Justice Department has declared it believes a decades-old Hispanic college grant program is unconstitutional and will not defend it from a legal challenge brought by the state of Tennessee.

According to The Associated Press, the DOJ announced its intentions not to defend the Hispanic-Serving Institution program in a memo to Congress. The program, created in 1998 to address disparities in Hispanic college admittance and graduation rates, provides grants to colleges and universities with an undergraduate Hispanic proportion of 25 percent or more.

"The state of Tennessee and an anti-affirmative action organization sued the U.S. Education Department in June, asking a judge to halt the Hispanic-Serving Institution program," reported Collin Binkley and Jocelyn Gecker. "Tennessee argued all of its public universities serve Hispanic students but none meet the 'arbitrary ethnic threshold' to be eligible for the grants. Those schools miss out on tens of millions of dollars because of discriminatory requirements, the suit said."

Tennessee is represented by Students for Fair Admissions, the same group that led the cases that led the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

That decision prohibited schools, other than military institutions, from "outright racial balancing," although it left open the possibility that some racial diversity programs could be constitutional if they centered on applicants' background or experience rather than strictly their membership in a racial group.

According to the report, "More than 500 colleges and universities are designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions, making them eligible for the grant program. Congress appropriated about $350 million for the program in 2024. Colleges compete for the grants, which can go toward a range of uses, from building improvements to science programs." Former President Joe Biden pledged to seek increased funding for this program, but Trump revoked the executive order advocating this.

This comes at a moment when Trump is cratering with Hispanic voters in polling, after relying on a stronger-than-usual performance with them to secure his re-election in 2024.