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| Four of the six students in the FAMU lawsuit with their legal team. |
A federal judge is allowing a potential class-action lawsuit filed by six FAMU students alleging that the State of Florida historically underfunded and discriminated against FAMU, the state’s only publicly funded HBCU, to move forward, for now.
The judge, however, gave the plaintiffs 30 days to revise their lawsuit and provide more specific examples in their complaint. .
"I think that when we refile the complaint it'll be done so with more specificity," said Josh Dubin, the student’s attorney.
Specifically, the judge took issue with several parts of the filing, one being the list of defendants. The defendant's list is ambitious and currently lists the state, Governor DeSantis, and the university's system board of Governors.
The second issue being the validity of white universities duplicating programs already being offered at FAMU. Programs such as combining the engineering program with FSU.
At issue
Florida has two land-grant institutions, the University of Florida and FAMU, which receives federal research dollars states are obligated to match.
While UF gets a 100% match, FAMU historically gets less than 50%, according to a 2013 study by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
And the students say overall state funding for UF and FAMU are worlds apart.
They calculate state support in 2019 for a UF student amounted to $14,984 and $11,450 for a FAMU student.
The funding difference amounts to approximately $1.3 billion since 1987.
“I think that our complaint will just be stronger when it's amended,” said Dubin.