The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in D.C. is seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction prohibiting the museum from closing its application window and selecting interns. The deadline to apply is April 1.
“Important programs like these that restrict participation to only certain races and ethnicities are unfair and illegal,” Blum said in a statement Friday.
A Smithsonian spokeswoman declined to comment, saying that “we never comment on litigation.”
The suit alleges that the Smithsonian program, aimed at increasing the number of Latinos in museum professions, excludes non-Latinos in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. It claims that the program has never hired anyone who is not of Latino descent.
The internship “is a museum career pathway program designed to increase hands-on training opportunities for Latina, Latino, and Latinx-identifying undergraduate students interested in art museum careers,” according to the program’s website.
Only 5 percent of “key museum positions” are filled by Latinos, the museum notes, citing a 2022 Mellon Foundation survey that found that more than 80 percent of “certain key roles continue to be held by White people, and gains among staff members who are Black or Indigenous remain limited overall.”
Even though the program does not explicitly bar non-Latinos from applying, the lawsuit alleges that its application asks students to indicate whether they identify as Latino or Hispanic, which it claims is a form of “pro-Latino discrimination.” The lawsuit also points to the Smithsonian’s marketing for the program and statements from museum officials that indicate that the internship is targeted at Latino students.
The internship began in 2022 and has hired 30 interns in its two sessions, according to the lawsuit.
The alliance alleges that one of its members, a college junior whose mother is White and whose father is Black, is unable to apply because the museum “hires only Latino interns.” The female student is identified only as “Member A” because “she fears that the Museum will hold her involvement in this lawsuit against her when selecting interns.”
Blum’s cases against Harvard and UNC overturned more than four decades of precedent that allowed universities to factor an applicant’s race during the admissions process. The court left open the question of race-conscious admissions at military academies, prompting Blum to initiate lawsuits against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and others.
In February, the high court denied an emergency request for West Point to change its race-conscious admissions policies.
Since the Harvard decision, Blum and other conservative groups have challenged diversity and affirmative action programs in the private and government-contracting sectors. Blum’s alliance is seeking to block a venture capital firm for women of color from awarding grants to Black women, and his lawsuits against diversity fellowships at large law firms have forced some to change or drop their fellowships altogether.
