The Brief

A scholarship for Black students at UC San Diego is now available to anyone, regardless of race, after students and a right-leaning nonprofit organization sued the university for discrimination this July.

The plaintiffs argued that the scholarship fund violated a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was put in place to protect Black Americans in the South.

One of the students, Kai Peters, said he was denied access to the scholarship because he isn’t Black. Peters sent a written statement to CalMatters through the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, the nonprofit plaintiff. He said his rejection is an example of “institutionalized racism” — a phrase that was created in part to characterize how government institutions discriminate against Black Americans.

“I don’t see the irony,” said Joshua Thompson, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the plaintiffs. “The idea is that we don’t want government actors out forcing their discrimination.”

The Black Alumni Scholarship Fund for UC San Diego students is now called the Goins Alumni Scholarship Fund, named after its founding donor Lennon Goins, according to a press release last week. Its website says each scholarship is worth $2,500 and that nearly 275 scholarships have been awarded since 2016.

The rebranded scholarship program is just one of numerous initiatives in California that have come under scrutiny in the last two years. Last summer, the Supreme Court overturned precedent that allowed private universities in the state to use affirmative action, and this year, the Trump Administration has ended numerous campus initiatives promoting diversity.

In March, the UC changed its hiring practices, banning its 10 campuses from requiring “diversity statements” as a condition for employment. Now those statements are voluntary.

Other changes are more subtle. In February, Bakersfield College described its “Chicano/Latino Pre-Commencement Event” as a means to “encourage Chicano/Latino students to participate in (graduation) celebrations.” But by the time graduation rolled around in May, the word “Chicano/Latino” had been removed from that sentence.

Website indicates change of focus

The press release about the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund didn’t address the reason for the change, and a spokesperson for the San Diego Foundation, Hiram Soto, declined to comment further.

But a CalMatters analysis of the fund’s website shows how the university changed course.

In September, the website said that the university scholarship fund was founded in 1983 by Goins to “expand educational opportunities for high achieving, civic-minded African American students,” focusing on admitted Black students with a record of “community service” and “resiliency to racial and other identity challenges.”

There was no mistake that this fund was by and for the Black community. “100% of BASF Scholars identify as Black/African American,” the website said, adding that the goal of the scholarship fund was to “increase Black graduation at UCSD from 2% to 5% of degrees awarded.”

Despite decades of scholarships, that goal remains unattained. In the 2023-24 school year, just under 3% of UC San Diego’s undergraduate degrees awarded went to students who identify as Black or African-American, according to the system’s data.

Racial discrimination is illegal in the U.S., but in California, the standard of what constitutes discrimination depends in part on whether an entity is public or private. While private entities, including nonprofits and foundations, have long offered scholarships and programs for certain racial or ethnic groups — arguing that spending money is a form of free speech — state agencies, including the UC campuses, are prohibited from any form of affirmative action after California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996.

To avoid legal scrutiny, UC San Diego moved the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund to the private San Diego Foundation in 1998, according to the September iteration of the fund’s website.

But in the lawsuit, Thompson and his legal team alleged that the university has remained involved in the scholarship’s operation. “Our allegations were that (UC San Diego officials) were conspiring with a private entity to get around (Prop.) 209 and the Equal Protection Clause.” Specifically, he said the university was giving the San Diego Foundation information about which students identified as Black on their college applications and that the leadership of the fund included some university officials.

The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 prohibits government agencies from using private entities to discriminate. Back then, government agencies and law enforcement, especially in the South, often used private groups — most famously, the Ku Klux Klan — to terrorize Black communities.

By working with the private foundation to support Black students, UC San Diego is guilty of the same kind of “nefarious behavior” as the government and law enforcement agencies of the Jim Crow South, Thompson said. “This is the full tradition of our civil rights laws,” he said, citing both the Ku Klux Klan Act and more recent laws, such as Prop. 209. “We don't want the government to discriminate against people on the basis of race.”

Soon after filing the lawsuit, Thompson said the scholarship fund reached out to his legal team and agreed to change its name and to open up applications to students who didn’t identify as Black.

He said other changes may be on the horizon. In February, the Pacific Legal Foundation sued UC San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital regarding another program aimed at minority high school students. Thompson said the San Francisco university system is now negotiating how to continue with that program too.

These negotiations happen informally, so there’s no written settlement agreement to show how universities are responding and what changes actually occur.

Today, the scholarship fund website says its applications are to open to UC San Diego students who are involved in community service and those with a demonstrated “ability to overcome major challenges,” as well as other race-neutral criteria.

The website includes no mention of Black students.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Four million acres of California’s wildest backcountry could soon be opened to paving roads and logging.

The Trump administration announced last week that it’s pushing forward with a proposal to scrap a 2001 rule that blocks logging, road building and other construction in parts of national forests. The administration argues repealing the so-called “roadless rule” is key to managing vegetation to better prevent wildfires on public lands.

Environmental advocates and other groups worry rescinding the rule would harm pristine habitat and the wildlife it supports, and open up more public land to industrial activities and human access that can cause more wildfires.

And locals are worried about losing access to some of the last protected natural lands in the region.

“What we're dealing with here in the roadless rule is the protection of the backcountry,” said David Browning, president of the Orange County Mountain Bike Association, “where you can actually go out and be having an experience where you don't hear traffic, where you don't see buildings, where you actually remember what it was like before all of us got here.”

In Southern California, large swaths of the Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests would lose protections.

Browning, who spoke with All Things Considered host Julia Paskin on Monday, said he’s particularly concerned about the Santa Ana Mountains, where much of Orange County’s backcountry biking trails exist within a roadless area that could be opened to construction.

“Our mission is to protect and expand trail access, and so our entire agenda is to make sure that in a highly populated county, like Orange, that we have available the outdoors to be able to go and enjoy,” he said.

Browning takes issue with the wildfire argument — he pointed to the 2024 Airport Fire, which was sparked when heavy equipment operated by Orange County employees struck a rock. They were moving large boulders that day to, in part, block vehicles from getting into a dry brush area and potentially starting a fire. Browning said the “roadless rule” prevents such access that could increase the risk of fire. A recent peer-reviewed study supports that, finding that although roads are important for managing a fire once it ignites, they’re also more likely to be a place where a fire starts.

Though addressing wildfires and protecting public lands have become heavily politicized under the Trump administration, Browning thinks most locals probably aren’t as divided.

“ I don't think this is a party issue,” he said. “We want to hold onto the outdoors and protect them as best we can.”

There unfortunately isn’t much respite in sight for heat-weary Southern Californians.

Forecasters say this week’s heat wave is likely to be the hottest so far this summer. Extreme heat warnings will be in effect from the National Weather Service for almost the entire region from Tuesday morning through Friday evening.

Temperatures will peak between Tuesday and Thursday.

Highs in downtown Los Angeles are expected to reach around 100 degrees, and the warmest inland valleys will get up to 112. L.A. County beaches will hit the high 80s.

Forecasters have also issued Red Flag Warnings for the interior mountains and foothills of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Gusty winds and low humidity at higher elevations mean fires could spark and spread quickly.

At lower elevations, humidity continues to make the heat feel more sweltering and make it harder to cool down, especially at night. Nighttime temperatures will only get down to the 70s in most places, including along the coast.

A slight cooldown is expected this weekend, though forecasters say temperatures will stay above normal into next week.

The extreme heat this week poses an especially high risk of heat-related illness for people over 65, young children, people who work or spend a lot of time outside and those without access to air conditioning.

Driving the heat

Several factors are behind this week’s heat wave, many of which have also been behind the rest of this summer’s consistently hot weather.

The main driver is a high pressure air system hovering over the southwestern U.S., trapping warm air, compressing it and warming it further, and blocking cooler air from entering the region.

Offshore winds are also pushing warm inland air toward the coast, preventing cooler onshore winds from blowing inland.

“That blocks our natural air conditioning off the ocean from coming in as early as it normally does,” said Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “So as long as that cool air stays offshore, it heats up on land.”

The offshore winds are not strong enough, however, to significantly dry out the air in the L.A. Basin and cut down on the humidity.

“That's probably going to be around for the whole summer because you’ve got all this warm ocean water that's feeding into that,” Wofford said.

Warmer seawater evaporates faster, adding to moisture in the air and increasing humidity across the region, especially along the coasts.

Air quality warnings

Along with the heat this week, many Southern Californians also have smog to worry about.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an ozone advisory on Monday for inland areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties, much of Riverside County and parts of San Bernardino County. It will remain in effect through Friday evening.

The multi-day smog event is in part driven by the heatwave.

Officials say ozone pollution may reach unhealthy levels or higher in the Santa Clarita Valley, parts of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys, and portions of the San Bernardino Mountains.

Under unhealthy levels, it’s possible for anyone to experience adverse health effects like difficulty breathing and throat irritation. Sensitive populations could experience more serious effects.

Levels are expected to be unhealthy for sensitive groups in the San Fernando Valley, Perris Valley, Mission Viejo, Lake Elsinore, Corona, Hemet, Riverside and Pasadena.

Officials advise certain vulnerable groups — including people with heart or lung disease, those with asthma, pregnant women, children and people over 65 — to limit their time outdoors.

Officials predict that ozone levels will be lower along the coast.