DOJ Finds UC San Diego Medical Faculty Discriminated By Race In Admissions

The Justice Division has discovered that the College of California San Diego Faculty of Drugs used race in its admissions course of in violation of federal civil rights legislation, in response to a findings letter introduced by the DOJ and despatched to the college on July 20, 2026.

The Civil Rights Division opened its compliance overview on March 25, 2026, below an settlement with the Division of Training, inspecting whether or not the medical faculty’s admissions practices adjust to Title VI and the Supreme Courtroom’s 2023 ruling in College students for Truthful Admissions v. Harvard (PDF File), which banned race-conscious admissions in greater schooling.

What The DOJ Says

In keeping with the letter, signed by Assistant Lawyer Basic Harmeet Ok. Dhillon, the varsity used “hardship” utility questions as a proxy for race after SFFA. Admissions employees sorted candidates into three teams by MCAT rating and GPA, then cut up every group into “hardship” subgroups (six classes in all) earlier than ranking batches of 30 candidates for interviews. Within the 2023-24 and 2024-25 cycles, reviewers had entry to candidates’ race throughout this stage.

Inside paperwork cited within the letter present the varsity’s director of admissions proposed in June 2023 (days earlier than the SFFA resolution) to “purposely choose some college students from Group C,” the lowest-scoring tier, as a result of roughly 550 underrepresented minority college students fell out of the center tier below race-neutral standards.

The Numbers

The DOJ’s evaluation of applicant-level information discovered admission charges for Black candidates had been greater than double these for white candidates three years working: 6.18% versus 2.45% for the 2023 incoming class, 5.25% versus 2.1% in 2024, and 5.14% versus 1.96% in 2025.

For the 2025 incoming class, Black and Hispanic admitted college students had a median MCAT rating of 510 (79th percentile), in contrast with 516 (92nd percentile) for white admittees and 519 (96th percentile) for Asian admittees — a niche the DOJ says widened after SFFA.

The Division additionally famous the varsity produced solely 75 paperwork in response to its requests and provided no clarification for the rating disparities. The letter concludes the discrimination coated the 2022-23 by 2024-25 admissions cycles and is “probably ongoing.”

How This Connects

That is the second College of California medical faculty to face a DOJ discrimination discovering in two months. In June 2026, the Division discovered UC Davis Faculty of Drugs violated Title VI by its “Davis Scale” socioeconomic scoring system, the place underrepresented enrollment rose from 24% in 2011 to 58% in 2023 and Black and Hispanic candidates had been admitted at charges as much as six occasions greater than white and Asian candidates with stronger metrics. The DOJ has additionally alleged Yale’s medical faculty discriminated by race by 2025, signaling that post-SFFA enforcement towards medical faculties is accelerating, not slowing down.

The admissions scrutiny lands because the monetary image for future docs shifts too: Grad PLUS loans finish in 2026, and new skilled pupil mortgage caps will restrict federal borrowing for medical college students, pushing extra candidates towards personal medical faculty loans to cowl the hole.

The DOJ is searching for a voluntary decision settlement to carry the varsity’s admissions practices into compliance with Title VI. If these negotiations fail, the Division says it’s going to sue. UC San Diego receives substantial federal funding, together with 9 lively Division of Training grants totaling roughly $14.6 million, which provides the federal government leverage below Title VI.

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