Seven current and former students at Lincoln University of Missouri filed a $549 million federal lawsuit against the state, claiming decades of underfunding at the historically Black land-grant school — and if they win, taxpayers in at least 16 other states could face similar payouts totaling billions.
The complaint, filed October 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, alleges the state violated the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by appropriating less per student to Lincoln than to the predominantly white University of Missouri in most fiscal years between 1987 and 2020. A September 2023 letter from the Biden administration's Agriculture and Education secretaries pegged Missouri's shortfall at $361.6 million.
NBC News reported that Missouri provided zero state matching funds for Lincoln's federal land-grant allocation from fiscal 2000 through 2007 and only partial matches after. Lincoln diverted roughly $43.5 million from its general operating budget between 2000 and 2016 to cover the state's share, and returned nearly $8 million in federal funds from 2016 through 2018 when it couldn't meet the matching requirements.
The physical consequences are documented. According to the complaint cited by AL.com, former student Makhi Joseph Berinyuy Jaff recorded deteriorating campus conditions, including a dormitory pipe burst that dispersed fecal matter throughout the building.
But the lawsuit's financial claims rest on a formula that one state higher education official has already called worthless. Jim Purcell, executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, told AL.com the federal calculation was "an amateuristic calculation," adding that federal officials "basically said we just did this general comparison of full-time students to budget allocations. That's such an amateuristic calculation compared to what academic costs are, and academic program mix is probably the most crucial aspect of expenses."
The formula ignores program differences — engineering costs more than literature. That hasn't stopped the Education Department from claiming 19 Black land-grant institutions nationwide were underfunded by a collective $12 billion. Alabama A&M alone was said to be shortchanged $527 million compared to Auburn University.
Plaintiffs' attorney Don Calloway, a former Missouri state representative, told AL.com the problem extends to 16 other historically Black colleges. "If you extrapolate the harm over the course of those graduates' earning potential and the value of their degree in the free market over generations now, it is a very demonstrable economic harm that's been visited not only upon those schools, but upon the graduates," Calloway said.
NBC framed the story as a straightforward civil rights grievance, citing the federal underfunding figure without scrutiny. AL.com noted the disputed formula and the skeptical counterpoint from Purcell but buried it deep in its coverage.
Neither outlet asked the question that matters to the Americans who would pay: after decades of taxpayer funding, where did the money go? American higher education has seen administrative bloat explode over the same period these lawsuits cover. If Lincoln was diverting millions from its operating budget, who made those allocation decisions — and why should taxpayers write another blank check?
Missouri officials have not yet responded to the suit. If the plaintiffs prevail, expect copycat claims in every state with an HBCU land-grant institution — all built on a formula that measures raw per-student spending without examining what universities actually do with the money they already get.
The courts will sort out the legal claims. The question nobody is asking: who accountable for the funds that already flowed through these institutions?
