The Justice Department announced Thursday that the UCLA School of Law discriminated against white and Asian applicants when it admitted its 2023, 2024 and 2025 entering classes. The department's Civil Rights Division concluded that the school's conduct violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. It also cited the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-conscious admissions.
In a letter to the university, the division asked UCLA to bring the law school's admissions into line with federal law. The department said it would try to negotiate a settlement first and would go to court if those efforts failed.
According to the department, its analysis showed that the law school turned away white and Asian applicants who had the same LSAT scores as Black and Hispanic applicants it admitted. "Plainly, lower-scoring white and Asian applicants would have been admitted by UCLA Law if they were black or Hispanic," the announcement said. The Associated Press reported that the analysis also found a lower mean LSAT score among admitted Black applicants than among admitted white applicants.
Investigators also found fault with the application itself. Since the 2023 ruling, the school's personal statements and essay prompts have been designed to draw out an applicant's race, the department concluded. Its findings say admissions staff showed prospective students how to disclose their race in those essays at recruiting events such as an annual Diversity Admissions Open House.
"Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin," said Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who leads the Civil Rights Division. "The use of race as a thumb on the scale that helps or disadvantages any student is illegal."
The law school stood by its process. In a statement, it said it is committed to making admissions decisions that comply with all applicable laws and that students are admitted "through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant's achievements and experiences." "We are confident in our process," the statement added.
The Supreme Court's 2023 ruling ended affirmative action in college admissions, but it allowed colleges to keep considering how an applicant's background bears on broader personal qualities. President Trump has accused colleges of using personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions, the AP noted.
California's public universities have been under a ban of their own since 1996, when voters approved Proposition 209. In a brief filed in the Harvard case, the University of California said that ban led to a steep decline in underrepresented minority students, especially at its most selective campuses. According to the brief, the university system then adopted a range of race-neutral measures to increase diversity.
Thursday's finding follows similar ones involving University of California medical schools. In May, the department accused UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine of discriminating against white and Asian applicants. On Sept. 22, it announced a finding that the medical school at UC San Francisco had discriminated based on race in admitting its 2023 through 2025 classes.
Law schools that accept federal financial assistance must follow federal antidiscrimination law, and the department plans to keep investigating whether they do. Dhillon said the department "will continue to enforce equal treatment under the law everywhere," law schools included.