Is Charitable Remedial Discrimination Okay?

Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University and a widely recognized expert in the law of charities, has argued in an upcoming law review article that private charities generally have the right to engage in “remedial discrimination.”

He argues that the Fearless Fund case decided by a divided panel of the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which holds that a venture capital fund may not run an award contest open only to black women entrepreneurs (See Nonprofit Issues^®, Vol. XXXIV, No. 3), was wrongly decided.  It would “upend decades of precedent in charity law, place at risk millions of dollars of charitable funds set aside for the benefit of racial groups, including at religious charities, and undermine the principle of philanthropic freedom,” he says.

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