The Department of Housing and Urban Development is investigating complaints that race-based student dormitories at some flagship state universities violate federal anti-discrimination laws.
Two complaints filed this month with the agency’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity accuse the University of Minnesota and University of Connecticut of practicing de facto segregation by clustering Black and Hispanic students into separate residences.
The Equal Protection Project, a nonprofit that supports colorblind civil rights policies, argues in the documents that the practice violates the Fair Housing Act by illegally steering others away from the publicly funded dwellings.
“We reviewed those complaints carefully and determined an investigation was warranted in each case,” Craig Trainor, assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, said in an email.
“While the Biden administration weaponized federal power to advance unlawful DEI initiatives nationwide, the Trump administration has undertaken the most sweeping effort in modern American history to eliminate the scourge of invidious racial discrimination,” he added.
Mr. Trainor has assigned both cases to the Office of Special Investigations, which he oversees. The office has asked the schools to send documentation of their housing policies.
“We will then review the documents, interview witnesses and may conduct on-site visits,” HUD said in an email. “Our investigations are conducted objectively and fairly and based solely on the evidence and the law.”
If HUD finds the universities broke fair housing laws, it could fine them and withhold federal funding until they abolish race-based residences.
Both universities in statements to The Washington Times denied any wrongdoing and pledged to cooperate.
“UConn does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender or any other aspect of identity, including in our on-campus housing,” said spokesman Michael Enright.
He said UConn organizes nearly 20 “interdisciplinary living and learning communities” around “similar interests, backgrounds or academic pursuits.”
“However, these communities are open to all students, and no student is denied access to these communities or housing based on their identity.”
University of Minnesota spokesman Kevin Gaffney called the Minneapolis campus “diligent in its compliance with federal regulations, guidelines and anti-discrimination laws.”
“The university is fully cooperating with HUD’s investigation into this matter,” Mr. Gaffney said.
On Friday, the Equal Protection Project filed another complaint accusing the University of Massachusetts’ Amherst campus of the same infringements. The college did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Cornell University law professor William Jacobson, who founded the project, insisted that steering people away from public housing based on race is “well-recognized as a violation of the law.”
He noted that internet archives show the schools quietly inserted “and open to all” into online descriptions of race-based dorms after President Trump returned to office in January 2025.
“The problem is that when you steer people away, they don’t apply,” Mr. Jacobson said in a phone call. “You don’t have to physically bar people of different ethnicities because you’ve already told them they’re not welcome, which is discriminatory.”
Social justice advocates insist that decades of past injustices warrant special consideration for minorities in college admissions, hiring and campus resources.
Omekongo Dibinga, a professor of intercultural communications affiliated with American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, said affinity housing creates communities “where non-White students could have safe spaces in predominantly White institutions.”
“They are not illegal,” Mr. Dibinga said. “If so, they would have never been allowed.”
He added that conservatives “have had great success in their so-called advocacy” against diversity programs since Mr. Trump returned to office.
“Their next step is to eliminate our presence on campus,” Mr. Dibinga said. “It’s disgraceful and expected.”
Black students formed the first race-based dorms in the 1960s.
“It’s always voluntary, but there are quiet forms of coercion in play,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars. “It undermines the goal of creating an educational community where people deal with one another as individuals, not as groups defined by their grievances.”
‘Open to all’
The Fair Housing Act declares it unlawful to “make, print, or publish … any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.”
The Equal Protection Project’s UConn complaint notes that the campus nevertheless advertises three separate domiciles for students who “identify as” Hispanics, Black men and Black women.
“It is a space for African American men to, one, come together and validate their experiences that they may have on campus,” faculty adviser Erik Hines says of one residence in UConn material included in the complaint. “Number two, it’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience.”
The University of Minnesota’s Living Learning Communities include a Black women’s residence and the Hunt Lee House, a community that’s “designed for Black men but open to all.”
“Open to all” was added sometime after March, according to archived university pages the Equal Protection Project reviewed.
UMass Amherst offers Asian-American, African/African-American and Hispanic-defined residential communities.
Ilya Shapiro, a libertarian constitutional law scholar at the Manhattan Institute, said encouraging “racial separation” in housing represents a “clear legal and constitutional violation.”
“It’s one thing to provide opportunities for cultural expression, quite another to recreate Jim Crow in the name of bizarro social justice,” Mr. Shapiro said.
