Move comes amid a flurry of lawsuits challenging racial preferences
The Smithsonian’s Latino history museum will no longer use race to evaluate applicants for its prestigious internship program, according to a settlement agreement released yesterday, the latest in a series of legal blows to race-based diversity initiatives in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action.
The internship had been reserved for “Latina, Latino, and Latinx-identifying undergraduate students.” In February, the American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the museum, which explores Hispanic-American history and is located in Washington, D.C., alleging that the program violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Rather than fight the lawsuit, the museum agreed to open the internship to all races. It changed the scoring rubric used to…
