US justice department accuses Yale medical school of illegally using race in admissions

The US Department of Justice on Thursday accused Yale University of illegally considering race in admissions to its medical school – the second institution to face discrimination allegations by the federal agency this month.In a letter to a lawyer for Yale, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a justice department investigation found that Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to the medical school than white or Asian students, despite having lower grade-point averages and lower test scores.“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” Dhillon said in a statement. “This department will continue to shed light on these illegal practices, and demand that institutions of higher education comply with federal law.”Yale officials and the attorney named in the justice department letter, Peter Spivack, did not immediately return email messages seeking comment.Since Donald Trump returned to office last year, his administration has been putting pressure on universities to stop using race as a basis for admission, which conservatives view as illegal discrimination. And a US Supreme Court decision in 2023 banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions, in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina.Last week, the justice department notified the University of California, Los Angeles that its medical school illegally considered race in admissions.In the letter to Yale, Dhillon alleged the New Haven, Connecticut, school was violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination and said the justice department is seeking to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement with the university. She also noted in the letter that the agency has the authority to take the school to court to enforce Title VI if it cannot obtain compliance through voluntary means.The justice department cited differences in grade-point averages and standardized test scores as evidence of racial preferences in the incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025. In Yale’s most recent class, Black students had a median GPA of 3.88 and a median MCAT score in the 95th percentile, compared with Asian students, who had a median GPA of 3.98, and white students, with a 3.97 median GPA. Both Asian and white students of that class had median MCAT scores in the 100th percentile.“Based on our preliminary review of the applicant-level data, Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant [having] as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials,” Dhillon’s letter said.The justice department also described Yale’s use of a holistic admissions process as a means for the school to consider race.The letter also cited Yale’s amicus brief in the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit that led to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, in which the school said it would not be able to maintain diverse classes without explicit consideration of race. The department said the fact that Yale was able to maintain similarly diverse classes despite that brief as evidence that the school had engaged in race discrimination.Dhillon wrote that the lack of any change in Yale’s admissions outcomes after the Supreme Court ruling showed “a willful failure to comply with that decision”.In March, a coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging a Trump administration policy that requires higher education institutions to collect data showing they aren’t considering race in admissions.