Jeff Hall, a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General and the Secretary of State to amend the ballot language of a proposed affirmative action ban in Nebraska. The Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative, the group behind the proposed ban, presented 167,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's office to get the issue on the November ballot. The current ballot language bans preferential treatment based on race, gender and ethnicity, and Hall contests that the language does not inform voters that equal opportunity programs and scholarships for minorities and women would be eliminated. Hall and others are concerned that the new legislation will hurt the diversity of the University of Nebraska. This year the university reported its most diverse student body in history. Over 300 scholarships were issued last year, many of which took students’ race, gender, income or first generation college student status into consideration.

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