“By strategically avoiding a Supreme Court ruling that could have eliminated race-based funding, we protected vital opportunities for the entire Black and brown community,” attorney Benjamin Crump said in a statement.
An Atlanta-based venture capital fund has agreed to discontinue a grant program for African-American business owners, settling a discrimination lawsuit that was first filed by a conservative-interest organization.
According to The Associated Press, the decision was announced two months after a U.S. federal court of appeals ordered the Fearless Fund to suspend its “Strivers Grant Contest.” In its ruling, the three-judge panel found that the contest—which provided up to $20,000 to businesses owned by Black women—was likely unlawful.
The Associated Press reports that the lawsuit was being closely watched as a potential bellwether in mounting legal claims against corporate diversity programs.
Ed Blum, the founder of the American Alliance for Equal Rights, signaled that his organization is pleased with the court’s decision. Blum, whose group was a plaintiff in the claim against Fearless Fund, said that “race-exclusive programs like the one the Fearless Fund promoted are divisive and illegal.”
Arian Simone, the CEO and co-founder of Fearless Fund, has since said that she looks forward to putting the lawsuit behind her. By settling the claim, Simone said, the Fearless Fund can resume “helping and empowering women of color entrepreneurs in need.”
Benjamin Crump, a prominent attorney who represented the Fearless Fund, said that negotiating a settlement kept the case out of the Supreme Court—where the justices could have set more stringent precedent against race-based funding.
“People are certainly seeing the writing on the wall on how the six-justice conservative super-majority in the Supreme Court would rule in DEI-related cases,” David Glasgow, executive director of New York University’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, told The Associated Press.
“By strategically avoiding a Supreme Court ruling that could have eliminated race-based funding, we protected vital opportunities for the entire Black and brown community,” Crump said in a statement.
Blum, for his part, said that “it is to be hoped race-exclusive programs like the one offered by the Fearless Fund will be stopped and opened to everyone, regardless of their race.” He emphasized that he had encouraged the Fund not to eliminate the Strivers Grant outright, but to instead open it to vulnerable women of all races and backgrounds.
The Associated Press notes that other companies sued by Blum have changed the terms of their scholarships and fellowships to accommodate applicants of all races.
“Fearless Fund was not going to allow Ed Blum to dictate how to run their business,” said Global Black Economic Forum counsel Alphonso David, who represented the Fund in the lawsuit.
Sources
Fearless Fund drops grant program for Black women business owners in lawsuit settlement
Fearless Fund ends its grant program for Black women to settle lawsuit
Fearless Fund ends program for Black women, settling discrimination lawsuit