The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday alleged that the University of California, Davis’ medical school violated civil rights law by adopting "admissions practices with the express purpose of circumventing” the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-conscious admissions.
According to the agency's findings, the medical school admitted 1.4% of White applicants and nearly 8% of Black and Hispanic applicants in 2024. This was "despite the fact that the average GPA and MCAT scores for those minority applicants were significantly lower than the white applicants they competed against," DOJ said.
The university did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday.
DOJ said it will sue the UC Davis School of Medicine, along with any other medical school it determines have violated the law, if it deems that settlement negotiations fail to bring those institutions back into compliance.
DOJ’s allegations against UC Davis
Since the high court handed down its race-conscious admissions ban, UC Davis' medical school has promoted the use of its Davis Scale, which it calls a "socio-economic disadvantage metric.”
The scale considers factors like an applicant's family income and receipt of need-based scholarships during undergraduate studies, according to the university. "These elements provide a fuller picture of each applicant’s educational opportunities along their way to medical school," it said in a 2024 post.
UC Davis has touted the scale as one of the ways it became "the third-most diverse medical school in the country” without race-conscious admissions. Almost half of its medical students belonged to historically underrepresented groups, the university said in 2024.
DOJ on Wednesday alleged the Davis Scale is an intentional and illegal effort by the medical school to bypass federal and state law.
Race-conscious admissions practices, along with affirmative action programs, have been banned in California since 1996.
In a statement, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division, accused UC Davis' medical school of demonstrating "unabashed contempt for the rule of law" and of "putting race over merit, skill, and competence."
Mark Henderson, the medical school’s associate dean of admissions, described its focus on applicants’ socioeconomic status as a form of "class-based affirmative action" in a March 2023 interview with STAT News.
"Class struggles have a huge overlap with race — that's how we skirted the issue," he said prior to the Supreme Court ruling.
The agency also cited a New York Times interview with Henderson published in July 2023.
Henderson told the paper that the Davis Scale would be defensible in court, should UC Davis be sued over it.
“Am I worried about it? Yes,” he said at the time. “Is it going to stop me? No.”
The Trump administration escalates federal probes into medical schools
DOJ under the Trump administration has dramatically ramped up scrutiny of medical school admissions practices.
For example, the agency last month accused the medical schools at Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles of illegally giving Black and Hispanic applicants an advantage in admissions.
However, public information about investigations like these has been scattershot.
Last week, DOJ opened 15 civil rights probes into medical school admissions but did not name the colleges under investigation.
And at least three other medical schools — those at Ohio State University, Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego — have reportedly been under investigation since March over their alleged use of race in their admissions. DOJ did not confirm the existence of these investigations publicly after The New York Times first reported the story.
DOJ said Wednesday that its findings on UC Davis' medical school resulted from a six-month investigation into the school's admissions practices. The agency did not publicize the investigation prior to releasing its findings.
