To support the findings, the Justice Department cited data showing that Black and Hispanic students accepted to medical school had lower GPAs and MCAT scores compared to white and Asian applicants.
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The medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, allegedly favored Black and Hispanic students during the last three admissions cycles, in violation of federal law and a 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the Justice Department said Wednesday as it released the results of a yearlong investigation into the institution.
The findings, outlined in a seven-page letter, are the first time the Justice Department has revealed that the university engaged in racial discrimination during the admissions process. But the Trump administration has opened multiple investigations into the issue as part of an effort to strengthen the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which banned racially sensitive admissions policies. As part of their campaign to stop whether colleges continue to use race in their admissions processes, administrators also want to submit annual application and admissions data to colleges.
“UCLA’s admissions process is biased by race for merit and efficiency—allowing racial politics to distract the school from its important mission of training great doctors,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. “Acceptance racism is illegal and un-American, and this department will not allow it to continue.”
Immigration experts have argued that the Trump administration’s interpretation of the court’s decision, as outlined in the DOJ’s anti-DEI guidance issued last year, overrides the court’s intentions.
“Maybe they have their own idea of what they think being SFFA is, but that’s not what SFFA is,” said Julie Park, a professor of education at the University of Maryland and a leading researcher on admissions.
The Justice Department wrote in its letter to UCLA that it intends to voluntarily settle the investigation “to ensure that admissions practices comply with the law.” The letter did not say what that would entail.
Students for Fair Admissions and other groups sued the medical school last year, accusing it of discriminating against applicants based on race. The Justice Department joined that lawsuit earlier this year.
Admissions inquiries are separate from other agency inquiries about UCLA and the broader UC program. The DOJ found last summer that UCLA created a hostile environment for Jewish students.
A spokesperson for the UCLA School of Medicine said in a statement Within Higher Ed that its admissions process is “based on a rigorous, thorough review of each applicant.”
“We are confident in our actions and our mission to maintain access to quality education for all qualified students,” said the spokesperson. “We are carefully reviewing the Justice Department’s report. The David Geffen School of Medicine is committed to providing equal opportunity to all applicants and to full compliance with federal and state laws.”
DOJ findings
To support its findings, the Justice Department cited data showing that Black and Hispanic students accepted to medical school had lower grade point averages and MCAT scores compared to white and Asian applicants. The organization’s lawyers also said that “the medical school’s internal policies, publicly distributed letters, and e-mails of its leadership, consistently and emphatically show. [the school’s] for the purpose of using race in admissions decisions despite the [Supreme Court] who rules.” (The UC system has been barred from considering race in admissions since 1996, when California passed a referendum making the practice illegal on public institutions.)
As an example, DOJ attorneys pointed to resources that medical school admissions administrators share including tips for achieving diversity goals and possible solutions to the Supreme Court decision.
“Those practices include racial representation and an emphasis on ‘thorough review processes’ as the basis for admissions,” the DOJ letter said. “Racial discrimination offends the Constitution and laws of our nation, just as racial discrimination is the opposite.”
Comprehensive college admissions—the use of factors beyond test scores and grades—has been the norm for a century, and higher education leaders widely agree that the practice is essential to creating a dynamic student body and campus environment. The Trump administration said in its guidance that features such as location or app items related to “lived experiences” or “overcoming obstacles” can be used as proxies for race. But the managers’ criteria for when they are considered representatives and when they are unclear are not clear.
Park said the administration’s vision for compliance may include accepting students with high MCAT scores and GPAs.
“They say UCLA has been using these races and I don’t see any evidence of that,” he said. “There are all kinds of reasons that medical schools will want to find themselves in a lot of places.”
DOJ attorneys also disputed resources shared by the administration that show how increasing the diversity of the health care workforce will improve health care outcomes for Black and Hispanic patients. The DOJ release called this a “questionable correlation,” but another UCLA study found that Hispanic patients fared better when treated by a Hispanic doctor. Likewise, a clinical trial at Stanford University found that Black men sought more preventive services when they were seen by Black doctors.
For “statistical evidence of intentional discrimination,” the DOJ used GPA and test score data for classes enrolled in the fall of 2023, 2024 and 2025. In 2023, the average MCAT score for black and Hispanic students fell to the 68th percentile, while all other demographic groups scored in the 86th percentile or higher. In 2024, black students scored in the 72nd percentile while Hispanic students dropped to the 66th percentile. Again, the average scores for some math groups were in the 86th percentile or higher. DOJ attorneys wrote in the letter that data for the class beginning in 2025 shows similar disparities, although specific numbers are not included.
The UCLA medical school said MCAT scores and GPAs are among the factors it considers as part of its comprehensive admissions process. But DOJ lawyers argue that this aggregate approach “does not explain the large disparities it has revealed in meaningful educational metrics between racial groups.” Instead, DOJ attorneys say the gaps in MCAT scores and GPAs show the university is relying on “the religious assumption that Black and Hispanic students are equally successful on these non-academic metrics.”
James Murphy, chief executive officer of Class Action, a higher education advocacy group, said he found the evidence against UCLA “really weak,” noting that the letter to the institution included few references to institutional documents or interviews with UCLA staff and students, both of which he said are common in civil rights investigations. Test results data also focus on the incoming class rather than considering students who were accepted but ended up studying elsewhere.
“Without the analysis of the applicant pool and the benefit – where the students who accepted them ended up leaving – they failed to understand the most important and important aspects of who enrolled in the class,” said Murphy, calling the findings “a case of complete government exploitation.”
