Cold dorms, lost millions: HBCU alumni sue Missouri over funding inequities

The lawsuit alleges discriminatory underfunding of Lincoln University relative to the traditionally White University of Missouri.

The lawsuit alleges discriminatory underfunding of Lincoln University relative to the traditionally White University of Missouri.

Alumni and a former student of Lincoln University in Missouri are suing the state for more than $500 million for failing to fund the historically Black land-grant university, bringing fresh attention to the lasting legacy of inequality in public higher education.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Missouri on Wednesday, alleges discriminatory underfunding of Lincoln relative to the traditionally white University of Missouri that left the HBCU grappling with problems from faulty plumbing to budget shortfalls. Both schools are land-grant institutions, a designation that requires their home state to match research funding from the federal government.

But Missouri provided less money to the HBCU and conditioned funding on graduation rates and other performance metrics that were never imposed on the University of Missouri, according to the complaint.

Lincoln diverted roughly $43.5 million from its operating budget for 16 years to cover the match Missouri failed to provide, money that could have been used to repair aging buildings, hire faculty and support students, the complaint said.

When states refuse to match the federal dollars afforded to Black land grants, the schools must either fill the financial gap on their own or waive up to 50 percent of the match to keep their federal funding.

When Lincoln could no longer afford to backfill the funding that the state was supposed to pay, it forfeited nearly $8 million in federal allocations from the Department of Agriculture in fiscal 2016 through 2018. Four years later in 2022, Missouri began providing the full state match to Lincoln, the complaint says.

Kitchen, a descendant of one of the Black Union soldiers who founded Lincoln, said the disparities were evident when he and other members of his family attended the university. He recalls going weeks without heat and hot water in his dorm, and having to use typewriters at a time when the University of Missouri had a full computer lab.

Some 35 years later, Kitchen’s co-plaintiff Makhi Joseph Berinyuy Jaff documented many of the same conditions at Lincoln in 2023, when he experienced faulty plumbing that caused fecal matter to spill throughout his dorm when pipes burst. Jaff left Lincoln within a year of enrolling.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to order the state to provide a full dollar-for-dollar match going forward and establish a remediation fund of nearly $549 million. That figure includes $361 million that the Biden administration said Missouri shorted Lincoln between 1987 and 2020, and accruing interest. Lincoln is not involved in the lawsuit and declined to comment.

The governor’s office, Missouri’s Coordinating Board for Higher Education, Missouri’s Commissioner of Higher Education and Workforce Development, and the University of Missouri System — defendants in the case — declined to comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit stems from a 2023 investigation by the Biden administration that found a roughly $12.6 billion aggregate disparity between the funding states provided to historically Black land-grant universities and their traditionally White counterparts between 1987 and 2020.

The analysis captured a sliver of state underfunding because 1987 is the earliest year for which comprehensive data is available, but HBCU advocates say the disparities are well-known. The Morrill Act of 1890 created 19 historically Black land-grant universities after several states refused to integrate the land-grant institutions created by the Morrill Act of 1862.

The nation’s land-grant universities are the backbone of public higher education, founded to further agricultural instruction and research. With state and federal investment, many of the 1862 institutions flourished, but often at the expense of their Black counterparts. In letters to 16 governors, the Education and Agriculture departments documented disparities and urged the states to rectify inequitable funding.

In the case of Lincoln, federal officials said “long-standing and ongoing underinvestment” had disadvantaged the students, faculty and community that the institution serves. Federal officials said the $361 million denied the university could have supported infrastructure and better positioned the university to compete for research grants. Reactions to the letters were mixed.

Missouri’s governor at the time, Mike Parsons, dismissed the letter as a ploy for “flashy headlines,” but members of the state legislature requested the state conduct its own analysis. State officials in Virginia rejected the federal government’s assertions, calling the data flawed, while Maryland lawmakers pledged support without committing to an exact investment.

In the wake of the letters, more states are following the law and meeting the matching requirements. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, all but one Black land-grant university received their matching funds for fiscal 2025. President Donald Trump, in an April 2025 executive order, encouraged states to provide the required match for 1890 institutions.

Denise A. Smith, an expert on HBCUs and former policy specialist at the Century Foundation, said some states have also made meaningful appropriations to their Black land-grant institutions. South Carolina State University received $54.7 million from the state to replace a century-old complex, marking the school’s first fully state-funded academic building in nearly 30 years, according to university officials.

The Trump administration has also diverted grant funding for minority-serving institutions to the nation’s 101 public and private historically Black schools, most recently providing a one-time investment of $174 million. Advocates caution against conflating federal investment in HBCUs with the funding due to Black land-grant institutions.

Wednesday’s lawsuit is the latest in a long line of legal fights to force states to atone for disparities in public higher education. HBCU advocates have brought cases in Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.