UCLA Law denies accusations, says process is merit-based
The Department of Justice on Thursday accused the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles of illegally considering race in admissions, the latest in a series of civil-rights findings the Trump administration has issued against universities. The department said UCLA Law discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes, citing a disparity in mean LSAT scores between admitted Black applicants and admitted white applicants.
UCLA School of Law denied the allegations and said in a statement that it was committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws. “Students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant’s achievements and experiences,” the statement said. “We are confident in our process.”
The Justice Department also said admissions staff at the law school instructed applicants during recruitment efforts — including one called the “Diversity Admissions Open House” — on how to reveal their race in essays. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a news release that “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.”
The finding comes more than three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that race-based affirmative action in college admissions is unlawful. The same decision allowed colleges to consider how an applicant’s background might speak to broader characteristics, but the president has accused universities of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — a practice conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The UCLA Law finding is the second the Justice Department has issued against a UCLA professional school. The department earlier this year accused UCLA’s medical school of similar conduct. The Justice Department has also issued findings against the UC Berkeley School of Law and the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, alleging those schools illegally discriminated against white and Asian applicants.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration tried to compel higher education institutions to release data including the race and sex of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students to enable it to investigate whether the schools were considering race in admissions. A federal judge in August halted that effort, granting a preliminary injunction after 17 Democratic state attorneys general filed suit. The judge said the federal government probably had authority to collect the data, but that the demand was rolled out in a “rushed and chaotic” manner. The states argued the data collection risked invading student privacy and leading to baseless investigations of colleges and universities, and that universities had not been given enough time to collect the data.