UC Davis favored less qualified Black, Latino med school applicants, Justice Department claims

The U.S. Justice Department has accused the UC Davis School of Medicine of choosing contention “over merit, skill, and competence” successful its admissions process, favoring Black and Latino students adjacent erstwhile they weren’t arsenic qualified arsenic achromatic and Asian applicants.

The section said its findings, announced Wednesday afternoon, were based connected a six-month probe by its Civil Rights Division. The Justice Department said it recovered that the Northern California assemblage violated the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-based determinations successful admissions. The findings person been contested by the school.

“Davis Med’s actions bespeak some unabashed contempt for the regularisation of instrumentality and plain disregard for the imaginable nationalist wellness consequences of putting contention implicit merit, skill, and competence,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said successful a statement.

“The Department volition not let schools to interruption national instrumentality without consequence.”

A spokesperson said the assemblage was “disappointed” with the study and its findings.

“UC Davis School of Medicine powerfully disagrees with immoderate characterization of its admissions practices arsenic discriminatory oregon inconsistent with applicable law,” a schoolhouse connection read. “The report’s findings bash not accurately bespeak the school’s rigorous, individualized, and merit-based admissions process and our steadfast committedness to complying with applicable national and authorities antidiscrimination laws.”

The section outlined its lawsuit successful a 12-page missive to an lawyer representing UC Davis, claiming the assemblage violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, arsenic interpreted by the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard.

Title VI prohibits institutions receiving national backing from discriminating based connected race, portion the 2023 determination banned affirmative enactment successful higher-education admissions.

The Justice Department said its probe recovered the aesculapian schoolhouse “adopted admissions practices with the explicit intent of circumventing” the 2023 ruling.

That method was the “Davis Scale,” the section said. The missive called the standard a “continuous measurement of socioeconomic disadvantage” that includes parental income and education, increasing up successful a medically underserved country and different socioeconomic variables.

The Justice Department included UC Davis lit that said the standard had allowed the schoolhouse to triple the enrollment of Black and Latino students.

In 2024, Davis’ aesculapian schoolhouse became the 3rd astir racially divers aesculapian schoolhouse successful the country, the Justice Department claimed.

Conversely, the section said its reappraisal of aesculapian schoolhouse admissions information from 2023 to 2025 recovered that 93% of achromatic and definite Asian applicants had MCAT scores astatine oregon supra those of the mean Black student.

It besides showed that Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted astatine rates up to six times higher than whites and Asians, contempt consistently having, connected average, little world qualifications, according to the department.

The Justice Department said it is attempting to participate into a voluntary statement with UC Davis to bring the aesculapian schoolhouse into compliance. The section would yet writer the aesculapian schoolhouse if specified a solution is not found.

UC Davis did not bespeak whether it would comply with the Justice Department.

“UC Davis is afloat committed to gathering the captious healthcare needs of California, peculiarly those successful underserved and under-resourced areas,” the schoolhouse said successful a statement.

The uncovering mirrors akin investigations into aesculapian schools astatine UCLA and UC San Diego.

The Justice Department said past period that UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine intentionally utilized contention for the past 3 years to discriminate against achromatic and Asian applicants during admissions.