Iowa Supreme Court blocks effort to redirect scholarship created for Black science students

The court ruled the University of Iowa cannot repurpose a donor-funded award intended for Black students into a scholarship for first-generation students.

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that the University of Iowa cannot redirect a privately endowed scholarship intended for Black science students to first-generation students instead. The Totton scholarship ruling, issued June 5, upholds a lower court decision blocking the university’s plan, which the school had tied to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions.

TheGrio has covered how that landmark decision was widely interpreted beyond its actual scope, which did not address scholarships or grants. TheGrio has also published guidance for Black students navigating higher education after the affirmative action ruling. According to Higher Ed Dive, the case now returns to the district court, which must take the donor’s will into account and include “an advocate for the donor’s intent.”

The scholarship was created by Ezra Totton, a Black chemistry professor who left the bequest upon his death in 1996 “out of gratitude to the University of Iowa for educating him in its graduate chemistry program during the Jim Crow era,” according to court documents. Totton specified the aid should go to “Black students majoring in the physical sciences, preferably chemistry.”

The university sought to modify the terms in January 2025, arguing the Supreme Court’s admissions ruling “raised serious doubts about its ability to administer the scholarship going forward.” Iowa’s attorney general backed the change, telling the court the scholarship’s “race-based eligibility is unconstitutional and thus impracticable to administer.”

The ACLU and NAACP filed an amicus brief opposing the university. Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for ACLU of Iowa, praised the ruling and noted that Black students and first-generation students are not interchangeable. At the University of Iowa, less than 3% of students are Black while 19% are first generation. “Without question, repurposing Dr. Totton’s gift to students who were the first person in their family to attend college would have had the effect of significantly diluting its potential benefit to Black students,” she said.

Totton’s nephew, Arthur Totten, said the proposed change would have betrayed his uncle’s purpose. “His goal, informed by his own life experiences of challenging and overcoming barriers for Black people to advance in higher education and of Black individuals supporting each other in this endeavor, was to continue to help black students do the same,” he said.