US DOJ: UCLA Law School Accused of Racial Discrimination in Admissions

October 5, 2026, 10:26 am CDT The University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is the latest to face scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice, which found that the law school discriminated against white and Asian applicants between 2019 and 2025. (Photo from Shutterstock ) The University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is the latest to face scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice, which found that the law school discriminated against white and Asian applicants between 2019 and 2025, violating the U.S. Supreme Courts 2023 ruling banning considerations regarding race in admissions. Reuters has the story. Since early August, the admissions policies for law schools at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and the Duke University School of Law have come under fire by President Donald Trumps administration for similar violations. On Thursday, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ, sent a six-page letter to a UCLA attorney stating that the law school had discriminated deliberately, and that the DOJ requests that the law school voluntarily bring its admissions policies into compliance. According to the letter, in 2025, Black applicants had seven times and Hispanic applicants two times better chances of being admitted compared to “otherwise equivalent” white applicants. In an Oct. 1 press release , the law school stated that it “is committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws, including the California Constitution and Proposition 209, federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution.” The move is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion at law schools and universities. Last month, the council for the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted to repeal its contentious standard regarding diversity and inclusion, a move seen by some as necessary to retain its status as the sole national accreditor of law schools. That vote followed an 86-page report last month from the U.S. Department of Education recommending to remove the council’s powers and an executive order in April 2025 directing the secretary of the Education Department to assess whether to suspend or terminate the council as the government’s official law school accreditor, citing its “unlawful ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ requirements.”