Lincoln University students, alumni sue state over higher education funding

Watch a news conference live in the video player.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

A group of Lincoln University students and alumni want a federal judge to fix what they claim is decades of underfunding from the state.

Seven people, represented by Calloway Law and the 1890 Project, filed the federal lawsuit against Governor Mike Kehoe, the state's higher education departments, and UM System President Mun Choi on Wednesday morning. The group claims the state has not spent the appropriate amount of land-grant matching dollars to Lincoln University, despite doing so for the University of Missouri since the 1980s.

The group plans to hold a news conference at 11 a.m. at the Missouri State Capitol.

An 1890 federal law required states opening a second land-grant university serving Black students to equally fund them alongside schools accepting only white students. The new lawsuit claims Missouri has fallen short in that regard for many years, possibly costing the Jefferson City-based school more than $300 million.

"Across fiscal years 2000 through 2024, approximately $65.8 million of the match that federal law required was paid by neither the State nor the University," the lawsuit said. "Missouri fully matched the University of Missouri's federal land-grant allocations in every one of those years."

State lawmakers and federal agencies have long demanded and warned the state about the issue. The Secretaries of Agriculture and Education in 2023 under President Joe Biden sent Missouri and several other states a letter about the "$12 billion disparity in funding between land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their non-HBCU land-grant peers in their states." State lawmakers that year also demanded the state spend money to fix some of those gaps.

The lawsuit said those going to Lincoln University suffered from the funding situation, including the campus's deferred maintenance and loss of scholarships.