A scholarship for Black students at UC San Diego is now available to anyone, regardless of race, after students and a right-leaning nonprofit organization sued the university for discrimination this July.

The plaintiffs argued that the scholarship fund violated a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was put in place to protect Black Americans in the South.

One of the students, Kai Peters, said he was denied access to the scholarship because he isn’t Black. Peters sent a written statement to CalMatters through the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, the nonprofit plaintiff. He said his rejection is an example of “institutionalized racism” — a phrase that was created in part to characterize how government institutions discriminate against Black Americans.

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