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The UCLA School of Law is the latest university to be accused of discriminating against white and Asian student applicants in a series of higher education civil rights investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Thursday, the department’s Civil Rights Division released the findings of its investigation, determining that the California law school “discriminated against white and Asian students” in its admissions practices from 2023 to 2025.
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon stated in a news release.
Responding to the investigation, the law school told the Daily Bruin that students are admitted based on merit, and its admissions office is committed to adhering to the law.
“We are confident in our process,” the law school told the student newspaper in a statement.
Discriminating based on race in college admissions is illegal under the 2023 Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
According to the investigation, UCLA’s law school allegedly uses essays and personal statements in its application to skirt the law and “elicit information about race.”
Evidence of this comes not only from the school’s demographic data but also statements from its leaders, according to the investigation.
The school’s “admissions staff instructed prospective applicants how to reveal their race in these sections of the application—during race-based recruitment efforts, such as its annual ‘Diversity Admissions Open House,’” the department found.
During one such open house on Nov. 8, 2023, Assistant Dean of Admissions Robert Schwartz emphasized the assistance that UCLA Law’s admissions office offers to “students from diverse backgrounds” when they apply, according to the investigation.
Schwartz also mentioned the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions practices, stating that UCLA Law operates a “holistic review process which enables us to enroll a diverse class.” Then, he mentioned that 58 percent of the first year law class were students of color and 63 percent were women, the department found.
The school’s admissions statistics also bear out its racial discrimination practices, the investigation alleges.
“… UCLA Law rejected white and Asian applicants who had the same LSAT scores as admitted black and Hispanic applicants. Plainly, lower-scoring white and Asian applicants would have been admitted by UCLA Law if they were black or Hispanic,” according to the department’s findings.
As to potential recourses, the department stated that it will negotiate with UCLA “to ensure the school’s admissions practices are brought into compliance. If those efforts fail, the Department will file suit.”
The UC Berkeley law school is facing very similar allegations from the department, as are a number of other law and medical schools across the country.
The Justice Department also alleges that George Washington University, UCLA‘s medical school, Yale School of Medicine, and the UC San Diego School of Medicine discriminated against students based on their race.
MORE: Feds target alleged racial preferences in new wave of medical school probes
