Two alumni and four current students of Lincoln University filed a federal civil rights suit against Missouri officials on October 7, asking a court to order the state to make up what they say it withheld from Missouri’s historically Black land-grant university. The federal matching statute at the center of the case is short, and it contains a provision most readers will not expect: federal money a state declines to match does not wait for that state to catch up. It is redistributed to institutions in states that did match.
Status as of October 9, 2026. The case was filed October 7 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. Nothing has been decided. The defendants have not yet answered, and every dollar figure below is an allegation drawn from federal data rather than a finding by any court.
Missouri has two land-grant universities. The University of Missouri was established in Columbia in 1839 and received land-grant status in 1870 under the first Morrill Act, according to the University Archives. Lincoln University in Jefferson City was established in 1866 with $5,000 raised by the 62nd United States Colored Infantry and $1,400 from the 65th, and was later designated Missouri’s land-grant institution under the second Morrill Act of 1890. That designation came with conditions, and this week’s suit argues Missouri has not met them for decades.
What was filed, and against whom
According to court documents described by the Columbia Missourian and KBIA, the plaintiffs are two Lincoln alumni and four currently enrolled students. The Associated Press identified two of them as Lincoln graduate Jeanneth Johnson and Herbert Kitchen, a retired California community college administrator whose great-great-grandfather was among the soldiers whose pay helped found the school. They are represented by Don Calloway, a former Missouri state representative, through a newly formed organization called the 1890 Project.
The named defendants are the Coordinating Board for Higher Education, Governor Mike Kehoe, Commissioner of Higher Education and Workforce Development Bennett Boggs, and University of Missouri System President Mun Choi. The complaint relies on a federal calculation that Missouri appropriated roughly $361.6 million less to Lincoln on a per-student basis than to the University of Missouri between 1987 and 2020. Inside Higher Ed reported the total relief sought at nearly $549 million. The plaintiffs also ask the court to require Missouri to match Lincoln’s federal land-grant funds in full going forward.
The Governor’s office and the University of Missouri System said they could not comment on pending litigation, and the Attorney General’s office declined to comment. The Missouri Legislative Black Caucus said it respects the judicial process and does not prejudge the case, while urging the Governor and legislative leaders to work with Lincoln during the 2027 session and to account for the university’s needs in the fiscal year 2028 budget.
The matching statute at the center of the case
Federal research and extension money for the 1890 land-grant institutions is not a grant a state can simply accept. Congress conditioned it on a state contribution, and that condition now sits in 7 U.S.C. section 3222d.
Subsection (c), the match. “Notwithstanding any other provision of this subchapter, the State shall provide equal matching funds from non-Federal sources.”
Subsection (d), the waiver. The Secretary of Agriculture “may waive the matching funds requirement under subsection (c) above the 50 percent level for any fiscal year for an eligible institution of a State if the Secretary determines that the State will be unlikely to satisfy the matching requirement.” A waiver reaches only the portion above half.
Subsection (f), the redistribution. Federal funds “that are not matched by a State in accordance with subsection (c) for a fiscal year shall be redistributed by the Secretary to eligible institutions whose States have satisfied the matching funds requirement for that fiscal year.”
Subsection (f) changes how the dispute looks. Unmatched federal dollars are not held in escrow and are not carried forward; they go to 1890 institutions in other states. Whatever a court concludes about Missouri’s appropriations, the money attached to an unmatched year is not sitting at the Department of Agriculture waiting to be claimed. That is one reason the plaintiffs seek damages from the state rather than a back payment from a federal agency.
What Missouri’s own statute books still say
The second Morrill Act permitted a state to maintain separate colleges for white and Black students, but only on a condition. Under 7 U.S.C. section 323, that arrangement satisfies the Act where there is a “just and equitable division of the fund,” and in states that already had a college for white students and a state-aided institution for Black students as of August 30, 1890, the legislature could propose that division to the Secretary of Agriculture.
Missouri’s answer to that invitation is still on the books. Section 172.730 RSMo, titled “Disposition of funds collected under provisions of Morrill bill” and carrying an effective date of August 28, 1945, directs that of the funds collected under the Act of Congress approved August 30, 1890, “One-sixteenth thereof” is paid for the benefit of Lincoln University, one-fourth of the remainder to the treasurer of the University of Missouri-Rolla, and the balance to the treasurer of the state university for the benefit of the agricultural college.
Two cautions. That statute governs the disposition of the federal Morrill payments, not the size of Missouri’s own appropriation, so it is not itself the match the plaintiffs say was missed. And we are not aware of a reported decision construing the one-sixteenth fraction against the “just and equitable division” language of section 323. It is a feature of the current statute books and nothing more until a court says otherwise.
Why the defendants are officials rather than the State of Missouri
A suit about state appropriations names a governor, a commissioner, a university system president and a coordinating board rather than the state itself because of the Eleventh Amendment, which ordinarily bars a private damages suit against a state in federal court. Litigants work around it in two ways, and this complaint appears to use both.
The first route is prospective relief against officials in their official capacities, the doctrine traced to Ex parte Young. A federal court may order an official to comply with federal law going forward even where it could not order the state treasury to pay for the past. That is the shape of the request for a permanent matching requirement.
The second route is an express congressional waiver. In 42 U.S.C. section 2000d-7, Congress provided that a state “shall not be immune under the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States from suit in Federal court” for a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, among other statutes, and that remedies “including remedies both at law and in equity” are available to the same extent as against a non-state entity. The timing provision deserves attention: subsection (b) applies the waiver to violations “that occur in whole or in part after October 21, 1986,” and the damages window the plaintiffs rely on begins in 1987.
The proof problem a funding disparity does not solve
A statistic showing unequal appropriations is evidence. It is not, by itself, the claim. In Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), the Supreme Court held that private individuals may sue to enforce Title VI’s section 601 prohibition on intentional discrimination, and may obtain injunctive relief and damages, but that no private right of action enforces the disparate-impact regulations issued under section 602. Justice Scalia wrote for a five-member majority; Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, reading the statute and its regulations as supporting a private remedy. This article takes no position on that disagreement.
Either way, a Title VI plaintiff seeking damages has to connect the disparity to intent, usually through legislative history, internal records, the handling of comparable institutions, and the state’s response once the shortfall was documented. That last category is where the September 2023 letters from the Secretaries of Agriculture and Education may do real work: they put sixteen governors on written notice of a calculated per-student gap, and conduct after notice is ordinarily more probative of intent than conduct before it.
“From fiscal year 2000 through 2007, the state appropriated nothing towards that match, zero.”
Don Calloway, counsel for the plaintiffs, quoted by KBIA on October 7, 2026. This is an allegation by plaintiffs’ counsel and has not been tested in court.
The federal measurement is a different exercise from the match. Using National Center for Education Statistics data, the two departments calculated what each 1890 institution would have received between 1987 and 2020 had its state funded it per student at the rate it funded that state’s 1862 institution, announcing a national total above $12 billion across sixteen states. Per-student parity is a reasonable way to frame a disparity and also a methodological choice a defendant can contest.
What comes next in Missouri, and in other states
Calloway told the Associated Press that he expects to “negotiate and/or litigate in multiple jurisdictions over the next year,” describing Missouri as the first of several targets and naming conversations with attorneys general in Virginia, Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia. He said talks with Missouri through the Attorney General’s office had broken down.
There is a settlement template. Maryland resolved a long-running equity case brought on behalf of its historically Black institutions for $577 million over ten years, signed into law in 2021 after an earlier veto. A settlement of that kind is a political decision rather than a judicial one, which is why the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus directed its request to the Governor and legislative leaders rather than to the court. The General Assembly convenes in January, and the fiscal year 2028 budget is the first cycle in which a negotiated remedy could realistically appear.
What the case decides, and what it does not
It is not a tuition case. No current student’s bill changes because of this filing, and the suit does not seek refunds of tuition paid.
It will not adjudicate the worth of a degree. Damages in a Title VI case are tied to proven injury from proven intentional discrimination, not to a general judgment about a credential.
Unmatched federal money is already gone. Subsection (f) sent it to institutions in states that matched, so any recovery would come from Missouri.
The budget is the faster path. Federal civil rights litigation against a state routinely takes years; an appropriation can be made in one session.
The structure here is familiar from smaller disputes. A documented disparity is the beginning of a case and not the end of one, in civil rights matters as much as in ordinary civil litigation. Claims under the Missouri Human Rights Act, Chapter 213 RSMo, and under Title VII carry their own intent and causation standards, and the same evidentiary question decides many employment discrimination matters: what the record shows about why a decision was made, not only how it turned out. Derek R. Haake has worked both sides of that question.
Helpful resources
The coverage below is drawn from several vantage points and labeled by ownership, so you can weigh each account and reach your own conclusion.
Primary sources. 7 U.S.C. section 3222d, the matching requirement and 7 U.S.C. section 323, the second Morrill Act proviso, both from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives, the official publisher of the United States Code. 42 U.S.C. section 2000d-7, the Eleventh Amendment waiver, same publisher. Section 172.730 RSMo, disposition of Morrill bill funds, from the Missouri Revisor of Statutes, the official publisher of Missouri law. The September 18, 2023 release on the Secretaries’ letters, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a federal agency describing its own action. Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), hosted by Justia, a privately owned legal publisher that reproduces the official reports.
Wire reporting. “HBCUs are underfunded. A legal effort starting in Missouri seeks to fix it”, by Heather Hollingsworth and Collin Binkley of the Associated Press, a nonprofit news cooperative widely regarded as neutral, carried here by WFMZ, a commercial U.S. broadcast station.
Newspapers and nonprofit newsrooms. “Cold dorms, lost millions” from The Washington Post, a privately owned U.S. newspaper of record. Missouri Independent’s account, from a nonprofit newsroom in the States Newsroom network, which discloses donor-funded support. Inside Higher Ed’s report on the amount sought, a privately owned higher education trade publication whose readership is university administrators.
A source with a disclosed interest. KBIA’s report, which describes the court documents in detail, comes from a public radio station licensed to the University of Missouri, whose system president is a named defendant in this case. The reporting is the most specific account of the filing available, and the ownership is worth knowing while reading it.
Related on this site: Fired After Reporting a Problem: Missouri’s Two Whistleblower Laws and What Each Protects · A Signed Arbitration Agreement Did Not Count Because the Job Never Started · Missouri Votes on the 2022 Map: What the Supreme Court Settled on September 25
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This article is educational only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it creates no attorney-client relationship with Haake Law Group PC or Derek R. Haake. The case discussed is pending and nothing in it has been decided. Statutes, regulations and court decisions change, and the figures described here are allegations rather than findings. Verify any statute or filing against the official source and consult an attorney about your own circumstances before acting.