The University of Nebraska was hit with a federal civil rights complaint on Monday for sponsoring a residency program for black filmmakers.

The complaint, filed by the Equal Protection Project, a nonprofit legal organization, alleged that the Black Public Media residency program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln illegally discriminates on the basis of race and requested that the Department of Education launch a federal civil rights investigation into the school.

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"UNL's creation, ongoing sponsorship and active promotion of a program giving admissions preference based on race and skin color violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ('Title VI') and its implementing regulations," the complaint stated.

According to the University of Nebraska website, the Black Public Media residency is a partnership with the New York-based nonprofit group Black Public Media that was launched in the summer of 2022 for "black filmmakers, creative technologists and artists who need access to emerging technology, studio time or work space."

William Jacobson, the founder of the Equal Protection Project and a professor at Cornell Law School, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the fact the university partnered with Black Public Media "does not excuse the racial discrimination" and added that universities "cannot offload discrimination, particularly for programs taking place on campus."

"While the law has been clear for decades that racial discrimination in education is unlawful, after the Supreme Court's Harvard decision, there can be no doubt that universities may not even take race into account to advance diversity objectives," Jacobson said. "Yet that is exactly what the U. Nebraska-Lincoln program does; it reserves a spot on program teams for black students in order to foster diversity, creating a disadvantage and lessening of opportunities for others."

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He added: "The racial discrimination of the U. Nebraska-Lincoln program is particularly pernicious because it requires that student teams organize themselves around race, with one team member required to be black. This puts students in the position of choosing among their peers focused on race. Making students complicit in the discrimination is offensive and troubling."

The Washington Examiner contacted the University of Nebraska for comment.