BALTIMORE, Maryland - In a historic, 60-page decision, Federal District Judge Catherine Blake ruled yesterday that Maryland has violated the constitutional rights of students at Maryland’s four Historically Black Institutions (HBIs), or Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), by unnecessarily duplicating their programs at nearby white institutions, a practice that begin during the era of de jure segregation.
The plaintiffs in the case, which was filed in 2006 and tried in 2012, are students and alumni from the four HBIs: Bowie State University, Coppin State University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
DISTRICT COURT DECISION ON Civil No. CCB-06-2773
The district court found that the lack of unique, high demand program has a segregative effect at HBIs and prevents the HBIs from attracting students of all races. The court noted that Maryland’s HBIs have only 11 unique high demand programs while the traditionally white institutions have 122.
The court also faulted Maryland for undermining the few unique, high demand programs at the HBIs, such as Morgan State University’s MBA program and Bowie’s State University’s Masters in Computer Science.
Rather than work to build up those programs, Maryland established competing programs at nearby white institutions, which caused the program enrollment at the HBIs to plummet. Judge Blake found Maryland’s conduct in undermining HBIs through unnecessary program duplication to be “comparable to, and in some cases more pronounced than, the duplication found in Mississippi” in a Supreme Court case from two decades ago.
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