The Department of Justice’s civil rights division, once regarded as the crown jewel of the agency, has been repurposed under the Trump administration into a weapon for politicised and racialised attacks against Black, Latino and other people of color. The clearest evidence yet came in May 2026, when the division issued findings that the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Yale School of Medicine had illegally used race in their admissions processes. The DOJ alleged that both institutions intentionally discriminated against white and Asian American applicants by favouring Black and Hispanic applicants, despite the latter group having, on average, lower grade-point averages and test scores.
The investigations, which covered incoming classes for 2023, 2024 and 2025, are the opening salvo in a broader campaign. In March 2026, the DOJ launched probes into the medical schools at Stanford University, Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego, requesting seven years of applicant-level data, academic indicators, demographic information and internal documents. Schools were given roughly one month to comply, with the implied threat of losing federal funding if they refused. Then, in June 2026, the department announced fifteen new investigations into potential race discrimination in medical school admissions at other institutions, though it has not publicly named the schools. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon justified the sweep by declaring that the DOJ would “continue to protect American students from discriminatory and illegal preferences in admissions” and ensure that “quality and excellence” — not “illegal race politics” — drive decisions in the medical profession.
Yet the reasoning underpinning the DOJ’s own findings is deeply flawed, according to critics. The department’s central claim is that the grades and test scores of admitted Black and Hispanic students were less competitive than those of white and Asian admits. But that conclusion rests on a statistical misstep. The differences in GPAs and test scores — one standard deviation or less — are far too small to be legally or statistically significant. Two standard deviations is the threshold commonly accepted by federal courts and social scientists as evidence of meaningful disparity in racial discrimination cases. Differences of this magnitude may be explained by random factors unrelated to race. The DOJ ignored other components of an application — transcripts, letters of recommendation, essays — that can reveal capabilities test scores miss. It also failed to account for factors such as socioeconomic status, geography and the unequal educational resources available to students long before they apply to medical school.
Misreading the law and ignoring systemic inequality
More critically, the Justice Department misconstrues the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In that landmark decision, the Court held that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause. But the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, explicitly permits universities to consider “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life” — for example, in personal essays. That means schools are allowed to take into account the obstacles and opportunities individual students have faced, including those related to race. The DOJ’s findings, however, suggest that SFFA bars any consideration of race at all — a reading the Court never endorsed.
The DOJ selectively focuses on small average differences in test scores and GPAs while ignoring the deep structural inequalities that shape those numbers. In California, Black and Hispanic students face systemic headwinds long before they apply to university. Schools serving predominantly Black and Hispanic populations are more likely to lack experienced teachers, default college-prep curricula, and dual-enrollment programmes that let high school students earn college credits. A 2023 survey by the California Student Aid Commission found that 78 percent of Black college students in the state experienced food insecurity and 65 percent experienced housing insecurity — the highest rates of any racial group. Nearly six out of ten Latino students worked while attending college, more than any other racial group. Research shows that working while studying, especially in low-wage jobs unrelated to a student’s field, can depress grades and reduce the likelihood of graduating. These burdens are not factored into the simplistic score comparisons the DOJ presents as proof of intentional discrimination.
At Yale, the DOJ claimed that a Black applicant had “as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.” At UCLA, the department charged that the admissions process was “focused on racial demographics at the expense of merit and excellence” and that the school adhered to the “dubious contention that patients receive the best care when treated by a doctor of the same race.” Both universities have defended their processes as legal and based on academic achievement and personal commitment.
Broader implications: abandoned duties and a chilling effect
While the administration manufactures claims of discrimination, it has simultaneously abandoned its legal obligation to investigate genuine complaints from students of colour. Over the past year, Donald Trump has cut nearly half of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights staff and closed seven of its twelve regional offices. Despite receiving a record number of civil rights complaints in 2025, the office reached just 112 resolution agreements — the fewest in at least twelve years. None of those agreements involved racial harassment, discriminatory school discipline, sexual harassment, sexual violence, or seclusion and restraint. Thousands of student complaints remain unresolved, leaving students without the protections guaranteed under federal law. A report documenting the cuts found that the OCR’s capacity to enforce civil rights has been severely crippled.
The administration’s broader assault on diversity efforts has also drawn legal pushback. In March 2026, seventeen Democratic state attorneys general sued to block an executive action that would have forced higher education institutions to provide data proving they were not using race in admissions. A federal judge later halted that effort. Meanwhile, the DOJ has sued Harvard University, accusing it of withholding admissions data relevant to an investigation into potential ongoing race discrimination.
The Justice Department’s campaign now extends beyond the five named schools. Stanford, which was already subject to a separate DOJ review in 2025, faces a fresh investigation. And the fifteen unidentified institutions now under scrutiny can expect the same intense data demands and allegations. Medical schools across the country must stand against these attacks and remain committed to equal opportunity for all students, including Black, Hispanic and other students of colour. If they accept the department’s flawed reasoning, they will not only undermine decades of civil rights progress — they will also blind themselves to the systemic inequalities that the DOJ has chosen to ignore.
