The U.S. Department of Justice accused Yale University’s medical school of discriminating against applicants based on race by unlawfully giving Black and Hispanic applicants an advantage in admissions.
The accusation comes just one week after the DOJ levied similar accusations against the University of California, Los Angeles’ medical school. Likewise, the agency launched probes in March into the medical schools at three institutions — Ohio State University, Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego — to determine whether they were unlawfully considering race in their admissions, The New York Times first reported.
The Trump administration has made enforcing the 2023 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious admissions a priority. In Yale’s case, the DOJ said a year-long investigation revealed Black and Hispanic students are much more likely to be admitted to the Yale School of Medicine compared to White and Asian students with similar academic profiles.
“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s civil rights unit, said in a Thursday statement. “This Department will continue to shed light on these illegal practices, and demand that institutions of higher education comply with federal law.”
A Yale spokesperson said on Thursday that university officials would review the DOJ’s letter.
“The students admitted to Yale School of Medicine demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and personal commitment; its program of medical education encourages curiosity and critical thinking, and its graduates go on to become leaders in clinical care, research, and public service,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Yale School of Medicine is confident in the rigorous admissions process we follow.”
In July, the DOJ issued a memo warning colleges that they could violate antidiscrimination laws over even racially neutral criteria. The agency gave the example of focusing recruiting efforts on certain regions if it determines those places were selected based on their demographics.
To that end, the DOJ accused Yale of using racial proxies to discriminate against medical school applicants who aren't Black or Hispanic. It pointed to a Yale admissions presentation that highlighted a policy from the University of California, Davis that gave applicants with low socioeconomic status an admissions advantage, resulting in higher admission rates of underrepresented minority students.
“The numerical data indicate that Yale took a similar approach,” Dhillon said in a letter laying out the department's findings.
Among applicants admitted to Yale’s incoming class of 2025, Black students had a median Medical College Admissions Test score of 518, while Hispanic students had a median score of 517, according to a Justice Department analysis of institutional data. The agency contrasted this with White and Hispanic students, which both had median MCAT scores of 524. MCAT scores range from 472 to 528.
The Justice Department accused Yale of discriminating against the incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025, and said it believes “that this discrimination is ongoing.”
Yale accepted just 4.9% of applicants to its MD program for the class of 2028 cohort, according to university data.
