A student is suing the Getty Foundation, claiming she was denied an internship opportunity because she is white.
CBS Los Angeles reports Samantha Niemann, an undergraduate student at Southern Utah University, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming Getty violated her civil rights and engaged in racial discrimination.
According to CBS Los Angeles, Niemann’s lawsuit claims that in February of 2015, she “was deterred from applying” for Getty's Multicultural Undergraduate Internship because of her race.
Niemann alleges she was told that “only black, Asian, Latino, Native-American and Pacific Islander candidates were eligible” for the internship.
Ron Hartwig, the vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust, told CBS Los Angeles that Getty recently changed their internship eligibility requirements.
He said, “Over the past 23 years Getty grants have supported over 3,000 internships at 152 organizations throughout the county. We review and revise all of our grant categories from time to time and over the years have made a number of policy and procedural changes to the internship program.”
The new eligibility requirements for the internship state applicants must be from “a group underrepresented in museums and visual arts.”
Getty writes the “underrepresented” groups are “including, but not limited to, individuals of African American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander descent.”
In addition to claiming Getty violated her civil rights and discriminated against her, Niemann alleges Getty harassed her and retaliated. She is seeking “unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.”