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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), requesting a federal investigation into Ohio Northern University (ONU) for apparent violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
ONU’s law school has tacitly admitted to using race and sex in faculty hiring and admissions, practices that are unconstitutional, unlawful, and destructive to American culture.
In a letter to the American Bar Association (ABA), ONU described its heavily white local bar as “unfortunate,” and admitted it would target additional adjunct faculty from the local community who “happen to be black.” This approach is not about inclusion; it results from a destructive ideology that views individuals based on immutable characteristics. The university has reduced its professors to their skin color and turned hiring into quota fulfillment.
ONU’s discrimination is not limited to its faculty. The university has also bragged about maintaining a “gender balance” in its student body year after year—a statistically improbable feat without unlawful discrimination. Perhaps worse, ONU has set aside scholarship dollars explicitly for “diverse” applicants. ONU enshrined its discrimination in 2023, adopting a campus-wide “Belonging, Inclusion, and Diversity” plan that calls for embedding DEI metrics into university hiring, evaluation, and governance.
These practices are illegal under Title VI, Title IX, U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and President Trump’s Executive Order 14173, which requires federally funded institutions to eliminate race- and sex-based discrimination. ONU should come into immediate compliance with these laws and directives.
“Targeting hiring or admissions based on immutable characteristics is un-American and against the law,” said Nicholas Barry, Senior Counsel at America First Legal. “OCR should investigate the entire Ohio Northern University system for violations, as there are almost certainly more hiding beneath the surface. There is no reason for the country to have ever funded activities so far outside America’s tradition of meritocracy and custom of viewing each person as a unique individual. It must be stopped.”
Read the complaint here.
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