The American Alliance for Equal Rights is asking the IRS to terminate the Gates Foundation's tax-exempt status over a scholarship program that is not open to white applicants.
(LifeSiteNews) -- The far-left Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation should lose its tax-exempt status for engaging in racial discrimination against white Americans in its tuition assistance efforts, a watchdog group alleged this week in a letter to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
In an April 1 letter to the IRS, the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) said the Gates Foundation “funds and oversees a prestigious and lucrative scholarship program, known as the Gates Scholarship, that is open only to ‘the following ethnicities: African-American, American Indians/Alaska Native, Asian & Pacific Islander American, and/or Hispanic American.’”
“The Foundation is intentionally discriminating against white students by excluding them from the tuition assistance and specialized support that it provides to students of every other race or ethnicity,” the letter argued. “Such discrimination is sufficient grounds on its own for the IRS to revoke the Foundation’s tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3). See Bob Jones, 461 U.S. at 595-96 (‘’Racially discriminatory’ institutions ‘cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the ‘charitable’ concept’ of the common law ‘or within the Congressional intent underlying §170 and §501(c)(3).’).”
The Daily Wire noted that the foundation has admitted as much in publicly available materials, such as a 2022 promotional video for the scholarship program, advertising it as specifically for “low-income, minority students.”
The group also brought to the IRS’s attention two lesser-known nonprofits for similar policies, the Lagrant Foundation and the Creative Capital Foundation.
“These organizations are free to operate as they wish – but not with the public subsidy that tax-exempt status provides,” AAER president Edward Blum said. But “(r)acial discrimination – whether in scholarships, professional development, or artistic grants – violates public policy and must not be underwritten by American taxpayers.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that race-based affirmative action was unconstitutional in the context of college admissions, and since then the Trump administration has prioritized eliminating taxpayer support for entities that practice Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, such as Title X family planning recipients like Planned Parenthood.
Many left-wing uses of taxpayer dollars are currently under review by the administration, including pro-abortion and pro-censorship activity through USAID, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda” through the National Science Foundation, and billions to left-wing “green energy” nonprofits through the Environmental Protection Agency.
Former Republican Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, President Donald Trump’s choice for IRS commissioner, has not yet been confirmed due to a paperwork issue; in the meantime, he is working as an adviser to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
