DOJ Concludes UCLA Med School Racially Discriminated in Admissions
On May 6, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded a year-long Title VI investigation by formally finding that UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) “intentionally discriminated against applicants based on their race” in the 2023, 2024, and 2025 incoming classes — three years of incoming doctors selected by a criterion the Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional.
The mechanism was a secondary application question that asked whether applicants identified as part of a “marginalized group” — designed, the DOJ found, to surface race so the school could weigh it. Admitted Black and Hispanic applicants carried consistently lower MCAT scores and GPAs than admitted white and Asian applicants in every cohort the DOJ examined. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division put it plainly: “As a result of these practices, highly qualified White, Asian, and other students were denied admission on the basis of their race.”
California voters banned affirmative action in public institutions in 1996 via Proposition 209. The Supreme Court reaffirmed the ban nationally in 2023. UCLA continued anyway — quietly, through “holistic review” language and targeted application questions — until the DOJ letter arrived.
- 3yearsof illegal race-based admissions — incoming classes 2023, 2024, and 2025 — documented in the DOJ findings letter
- 28 ptsMCAT gapBlack and Hispanic admits at the 68th percentile median vs. 96th percentile for those declining to report race — 2023 cohort · DOJ findings letter
- 0.26GPA gapHispanic admits' median GPA trailed Asian admits' by 0.26 grade points — 2024 cohort · DOJ findings letter
- Title VIviolationCivil Rights Act of 1964 — discrimination on the basis of race in a federally funded program — the legal hook for potential loss of federal funding
The Civil Rights Division’s formal findings letter, issued May 6, 2026, states that DGSOM “continues to intentionally discriminate against applicants based on their race after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvardby granting and denying admission on the basis of race.” The finding covers three consecutive incoming classes — 2023, 2024, and 2025 — meaning the conduct persisted for at least two full admissions cycles after the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling.
“UCLA's admissions process has been focused on racial demographics at the expense of merit and excellence — allowing racial politics to distract the school from the vital work of training great doctors.”
Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Civil Rights Division · May 6, 2026
Dhillon added: “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated: “Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.”
The finding is not a complaint or an allegation — it is the conclusion of a completed investigation. It triggers a formal compliance process: the DOJ is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement from UCLA. If none is reached, the Department may pursue litigation, and UCLA risks losing federal funding — a significant threat for a public university system that receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually from NIH, the Department of Education, and other federal agencies.
The DOJ examined admissions data across three cohorts and found a consistent, statistically significant pattern: Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted with lower academic credentials than white and Asian applicants admitted in the same cycles. The disparity was not marginal.
Admitted Black and Hispanic students: 68th percentile median MCAT score.
Admitted students who declined to report race: 96th percentile median MCAT score.
The gap: 28 percentile points. MCAT scores are the medical school admissions equivalent of SAT scores — the standardized test designed to predict performance in medical training. A 28-point percentile gap is not a rounding error; it is a deliberate thumb on the scale.
Hispanic admits: 66th percentile MCAT median.
Black admits: 72nd percentile MCAT median.
Students declining to report race: 92nd percentile MCAT median.
GPA: Hispanic admits’ median trailed Asian admits’ by 0.26 grade points (3.72 vs. 3.84 in a comparable breakdown for Black vs. Asian admits).
The DOJ also found documentary evidence: the school distributed materials outlining how to achieve “diversity goals” and maintained internal processes where race, national origin, and other demographic factors were weighed during the “holistic review.” The findings letter characterized this as intentional, not accidental.
The specific instrument the DOJ flagged is a question in DGSOM’s secondary application — the supplemental application that follows the initial AMCAS submission. The question asked applicants whether they identify as part of a “marginalized group,” with a follow-up asking about the impact of that identity on their experience.
“By design, this question asks Black and Hispanic applicants to reveal their race so that [the medical school] can know and consider it.”
Harmeet K. Dhillon, DOJ Civil Rights Division findings letter · May 6, 2026
This is the precise evasion strategy critics warned about after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling: replacing an explicit race checkbox with a proxy question that produces the same information and enables the same preferential weighting. The DOJ found UCLA used this mechanism in the 2024 and 2025 admissions cycles — after SFFA v. Harvard was already decided.
The school also distributed internal documents outlining “diversity goals” for incoming classes — a target demographic composition that admissions staff were expected to achieve. The DOJ investigators reviewed those documents. Their conclusion: the school’s “holistic review” was a paper cover for a race-sorting process the law had banned.
The DOJ also noted that school documents reflected the ideological premise that “patients receive the best care when treated by a doctor of the same race” — a disputed claim the DOJ characterized as a rationale for selecting minority students over more academically qualified applicants. The implication: the school believed race-matching between doctor and patient was a legitimate reason to lower academic standards in admissions.
Chancellor:Julio Frenk — the 7th Chancellor of UCLA, named in 2024 and taking office January 1, 2025. Former dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2009–2015) and president of the University of Miami (2015–2024). UCLA is a public university under the University of California system; it receives substantial federal funding and is bound by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Dean, David Geffen School of Medicine:Steve Dubinett, MD — Dean of DGSOM and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, UCLA. The medical school bearing the name of entertainment mogul David Geffen is consistently ranked among the top public medical schools in the United States.
Governor of California (state oversight):Gavin Newsom (D) — UCLA is a public university in a state that has banned affirmative action in public institutions since Prop. 209 passed in 1996, predating the federal Supreme Court ruling by 27 years.
The question the DOJ letter raises:How does a public university in a state that banned racial preferences in 1996 maintain a three-year admissions practice explicitly designed to sort applicants by race — and call it “merit-based”?
The DOJ investigation was triggered in part by a private lawsuit filed in May 2025 by Do No Harm— the Virginia-based medical advocacy group — and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the same organization that won the landmark 2023 Supreme Court case banning race-conscious admissions at Harvard and UNC. A rejected white applicant was also named as a plaintiff. The suit, filed in federal court in Santa Ana, California, alleged that DGSOM maintained a “systemically racist approach” that favored Black and Latino applicants.
In January 2026, the DOJ moved to intervene in that lawsuit — formally joining the case against the school. The May 6 findings letter represents the conclusion of the parallel administrative investigation under Title VI, giving the DOJ two simultaneous legal levers: the civil rights investigation and the active lawsuit.
UCLA is not the only medical school under federal scrutiny. The Trump administration has opened similar investigations into Stanford, Ohio State, and UC San Diego medical schools as part of a broader campaign to enforce the post-SFFA legal landscape across higher education.
In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvardthat race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, stated that “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
The ruling applied to all colleges and universities receiving federal funding — which includes every school in the UC system. UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine was bound by that ruling from day one. The DOJ finding establishes that the school continued its race-sorting admissions process for at least two full cycles after the ruling, in the 2024 and 2025 admissions rounds.
California’s Proposition 209, passed by voters in 1996, separately bans race, sex, color, ethnicity, and national origin as factors in public employment, contracting, and education — predating the federal ruling by 27 years. A California public medical school was therefore doubly prohibited: by state law since 1996 and by federal constitutional law since 2023. The DOJ investigation found it discriminated anyway, in at least three consecutive cohorts.
“The admissions process at the David Geffen School of Medicine is based on merit and grounded in a rigorous, comprehensive review of each applicant.”
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA spokesperson · statement to multiple outlets · May 6, 2026
The school added that it is “carefully reviewing” the DOJ report and remains “committed to providing equal opportunity” while following state and federal law. No UCLA official has publicly acknowledged the specific statistical disparities documented in the findings letter, nor addressed the secondary application question that the DOJ found was designed to surface race.
The boilerplate “merit-based” defense is precisely what the DOJ investigated. The findings letter is the agency’s answer: the admitted students’ MCAT scores and GPAs do not support a merit-only explanation for the demographic pattern the DOJ documented across three cohorts.
California banned racial preferences in public education in 1996. The Supreme Court banned them nationally in 2023. UCLA’s medical school used them anyway — for at least three consecutive incoming classes, through a secondary application question designed to surface race without asking for it directly. The DOJ found a 28-point MCAT percentile gap between racial groups in the 2023 cohort alone. Every rejected white or Asian applicant whose test scores fell between the two distributions has a federal finding to read.