Today, the Justice Department announced that the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) voluntarily resolved the Department’s compliance review under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI). The Department opened a review of MDH’s Capacity Strengthening Initiative grant program because it used race, color, and national origin to determine which applicants received funding. Because MDH has now ended the grant program, the Department is closing its review.
“Recipients of federal dollars cannot decide who benefits from those funds on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department appreciates that the State of Minnesota has recognized this foundational principle and has repealed the statute governing the program.”
The Capacity Strengthening Initiative grant program was purportedly established to help organizations serving “people of color.” The grant program limited eligible grantees to organizations that worked with “people of color,” provided “strategic consideration and g[a]ve priority” to proposals from organizations “led by populations of color,” and ensured that grant funds were prioritized and awarded to organizations that were within counties that had a higher proportion of “Black or African American” and “nonwhite Latino(a)” communities. After the Department notified MDH of the compliance review, Minnesota repealed the Capacity Strengthening Initiative grant program’s enabling statute and MDH confirmed the program had ended.
Title VI prohibits race, color, or national origin discrimination by recipients of Federal financial assistance, including the Minnesota Department of Health. Additional information about the Civil Rights Division is available on its website at www.justice.gov/crt.
