The Justice Department announced Wednesday that the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally factored race into its admissions process, concluding a year‑long probe that found the school favored Black and Hispanic applicants over equally or more academically qualified white and Asian American candidates.
In a letter of findings, the department’s Civil Rights Division said its review of 2023 and 2024 admissions data showed admitted Black and Hispanic students had lower average grade‑point averages and test scores than admitted white and Asian applicants. The department highlighted that Black students admitted in 2024 had an average GPA of 3.72, compared with averages of 3.84 for Asian Americans and 3.83 for white students. Investigators also flagged an application prompt used in 2024 and 2025 that invited applicants to volunteer whether they belonged to a “marginalized group” and to describe the impact — a document the department said served as a vehicle to consider race.
“As a result of these practices, highly qualified White, Asian, and other students were denied admission on the basis of their race,” wrote Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, summarizing the department’s conclusion. The finding sets up the possibility of a voluntary resolution to bring the medical school into compliance with federal law or, if an agreement cannot be reached, potential legal action that could carry penalties including the loss of federal funding.
UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine responded in a written statement saying its admissions process is “based on merit” and that the school is committed to complying with state and federal laws. The statement said the school is reviewing the Justice Department’s findings. The announcement intensifies a wider confrontation between the Trump administration and the University of California system, which had previously been focused on allegations of antisemitic harassment on the main campus.
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The department’s action follows broader Trump administration efforts to police how universities weigh applicants’ backgrounds after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision that struck down race‑based affirmative action in college admissions. The high court allowed institutions to consider applicants’ life experiences and backgrounds when those factors bear on broader personal characteristics, but the administration has accused some colleges of using personal statements and other “proxies” to reintroduce race into selection decisions.
Justice Department investigators have opened similar inquiries into medical school admissions at Stanford, Ohio State and UC San Diego since March, as federal officials press selective programs to demonstrate compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. That federal push has met legal resistance: in March a coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general sued to block a Trump administration policy requiring higher education institutions to collect data proving they are not considering race in admissions, and earlier this year a Boston federal judge barred the Department of Education from compelling seven years of race‑based admissions data from public universities in 17 states.
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California itself has long grappled with race and access: voters banned affirmative action in public university admissions in 1996, a move the UC system says precipitated a sharp decline in underrepresented minority enrollment at its most selective campuses and prompted a range of race‑neutral measures to try to restore diversity. The Justice Department’s finding against UCLA’s medical school will likely sharpen legal and political battles over how universities try to build diverse cohorts without violating the Supreme Court’s bar on race‑based decision‑making.
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