The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) “illegally discriminated on the basis of race in its medical school admissions processes for the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025 and in its operation of diversity pipeline programs,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found in a letter published Tuesday. The finding, apparently the first since a Supreme Court ruling declaring the practice unconstitutional, showcases the ongoing effort by progressive institutions to keep a racist thumb on the scales.

On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, which cited Brown v. Board of Education’s “fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.”

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly

held, applies ‘without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality’ — it is ‘universal in [its] application,’” the court argued. “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

UCSF administrators responded to this commonsense conclusion with defiance. “On June 29, 2023, the day of the SFFA decision, UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood issued a statement in response to the Supreme Court's ruling, co-signed by UCSF Chief Diversity and Outreach Officer J. Renee Navarro,” the DOJ observed. “The statement echoed University of California (‘UC’) President Michael V. Drake’s vow to ‘prioritize student diversity with every tool available’ and declared that the SFFA decision ‘does not directly impact the UC system.’”

This defiance is consistent with the school’s openly racist admissions policy, the DOJ alleged, “UCSF Med openly admits that its goal is to increase enrollment from specific racial groups it designates as underrepresented minorities in medicine (‘URM’), which excludes all white students and most Asian students.”

“UCSF Med, along with the rest of the UC system, embarked on a plan to circumvent the law by using supposedly race-neutral strategies to achieve its goal of racial balancing,” the DOJ continued. “These strategies included targeting outreach efforts to certain groups, schools, organizations, and geographic areas based on their racial composition. They also included diversity ‘pipeline’ programs.”

The pipeline programs “achieve their racial diversity goals through focused recruitment of URM applicants, channeling them through a special application process, and offering scholarships and other funding not available to other students.”

Other admissions policies base requirements on racial “stereotypes” to create “racial proxies,” and then filter applicants through a three-stage admissions process, the DOJ described.

The racial discrimination that occurs in this filtration process is evident from the results, the DOJ alleged. “The average admitted black and Hispanic student academically underperformed the average rejected white and Asian student,” it stated. Or, to compare apples to apples, “In 2025, UCSF Med was 4.6 times more likely to admit Hispanic applicants and 12.6 times more likely to admit black applicants compared to white applicants with the same MCAT score, undergraduate GPA, and socioeconomic characteristics.”

“Aspiring doctors should be admitted based on their qualifications,” argued Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. “Unfortunately, at UCSF Medical School, MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs have taken a backseat to race. … The Supreme Court has spoken clearly — federally funded medical schools may not admit students based on misguided and illegal notions of diversity.”

Despite the finding of racial discrimination, the Trump administration is proceeding toward any consequences with notable caution. Before taking any unilateral punitive action, such as filing a lawsuit or withholding federal funds, the DOJ invited UCSF “to resolve this matter through a voluntary compliance agreement.”

The burden now falls on the medical school to respond to the allegation of racial discrimination.