The Justice Department has concluded that UCLA’s medical school engaged in illegal race-based discrimination in admissions, alleging the school favored Black and Hispanic applicants in violation of federal law.
The finding follows a yearlong federal investigation and marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s push to crack down on diversity-based admissions practices across U.S. universities. A lawsuit filed by medical advocacy group Do No Harm prompted the Justice Department’s investigation into UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
“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.” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”
The Justice Department investigation revealed that UCLA’s medical school intentionally selected minority medical students based upon the presumption that minority patients will receive better care if they are under the treatment of a minority doctor. However, the Justice Department found that the medical school’s focus on selecting minority medical students resulted in the selected students having significantly lower GPAs and MCAT scores on average than their White and Asian counterparts.
A spokesperson for David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA told Fox News Digital in a statement that the school’s admission process is merit-based and “grounded in a rigorous, comprehensive review of each applicant.”
“We are confident in our practices and our mission to maintain access to a high-quality education for all qualified students,” the spokesperson said. “We are carefully reviewing the Department of Justice’s report. The David Geffen School of Medicine is committed to providing equal opportunity to all applicants and fully complying with federal and state laws.”
Amid its investigation, the Justice Department found that David Geffen School of Medicine’s executive director of admissions distributed a document outlining how the medical school could still achieve its “diversity goals” to admission committee members. This document also stated the theory that “diversity” of healthcare workers will be crucial in improving healthcare outcomes for Black and Hispanic patients and that denying Black and Hispanic students’ admission could cause the deaths of future Black and Hispanic patients.
The medical school has also adopted a “holistic” approach in its admissions process, implying that factors such as “citizenship,” “distance travelled,” “relationship status,” “cultural events,” “race,” “national origin” and “sexual orientation” are all taken into consideration, according to an Association of American Medical Colleges model used by the school.
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Prospective medical students of UCLA’s medical school also engaged in a PREview Exam, a multiple-choice test, which specifically asked applicants if they were part of a marginalized group.
“By design, this question asks Black and Hispanic applicants to reveal their race so that DGSOM can know and consider it,” the Justice Department report stated.
The Justice Department found major disparities between the test scores of White and Asian students and Hispanic and Black students admitted in the 2023 and 2024 cohorts.
In the 2023 cohort, the median MCAT scores among Black and Hispanic test takers were at the 68th percentile, while those who did not report their race scored at the 96th percentile.
GPAs also show a significant gap, with the lowest median (Hispanic) trailing the highest median (Asian) by 0.26 grade points.
And in the 2024 cohort, Hispanic students scores averaged in the 66 percentile, Black students in the 72 percentile; while those who declined to share their race scored at the 92 percentile.
“Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. “The pattern of illegal and odious conduct by UCLA’s medical school is abhorrent to our Constitution and our nation’s founding principles.”
The conclusion of the investigation comes as the Trump administration launched investigations into the admission process of medical schools at Stanford University, Ohio State University, and the University of California, San Diego in March.
