The Justice Department alleges UCLA Law has run a race-based admissions system that disadvantages white and Asian applicants since 2023, a charge the school rejects.
Federal civil rights officials say the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law has treated applicants differently by race for years after the Supreme Court barred that practice. The department sent a letter to the university alleging intentional discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that bars race discrimination by schools that take federal funds, and the 2023 high court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
The Center Square reported the Justice Department’s findings and the school’s response. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division framed the case in blunt terms.
"Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin,"
Dhillon said. She added:
"The use of race as a thumb on the scale that helps or disadvantages any student is illegal."
UCLA Law denied the charge. Orli Belman, the school’s assistant dean of communications, sent a statement saying students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review that weighs each applicant’s achievements and experiences, and that the school is confident in its process. The school also said it is committed to ensuring its admissions process complies with state and federal law.
The department’s core claim is simple. Beginning in 2023, UCLA Law rejected white and Asian applicants whose Law School Admission Test scores were comparable to those of admitted Black and Hispanic applicants. The LSAT is the standardized exam most law schools use to measure readiness.
In 2024 and 2025, half of admitted Black applicants had LSAT scores at or below 90 percent of the scores of admitted white applicants, the Justice Department said. Officials further alleged that some white and Asian applicants with lower LSAT scores than admitted Black and Hispanic students would have been admitted if they belonged to those racial groups.
That is the two-tier system Dhillon described: the academic standard moves with the applicant’s race. White and Asian candidates face one bar. Other groups face another. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in the Students for Fair Admissions cases held that colleges may not use race as a plus or a minus in admissions. Title VI already made race discrimination illegal for federally funded programs. The Justice Department says UCLA Law did it anyway.
The department has not described a filed lawsuit in the public account of this matter. It says it wants a voluntary resolution agreement with UCLA Law to bring admissions practices into legal compliance. That path is common in civil rights enforcement: the government lays out the alleged violation, then offers the institution a chance to change course under federal oversight before a case goes to court.
UCLA Law’s public answer stays short. It insists the process is merit-based and lawful. It does not, in the available statement, address the LSAT comparison figures or the claim that race shifted the academic threshold. The gap between the department’s numbers and the school’s two-sentence denial is the heart of the dispute.
The timeline matters. The Supreme Court closed the door on race-conscious college admissions in 2023. The Justice Department says UCLA Law’s discrimination against white and Asian applicants began that same year and continued through the 2024 and 2025 cycles reflected in the LSAT data. If those figures hold, the school did not merely slow-walk compliance. It kept a racial thumb on the scale after the law changed.
Elite professional schools sit at the gate of law, medicine, and public power. When they sort applicants by race, they tell high-scoring white and Asian students their credentials count for less. They also tell every other student that the school doubts the system can be fair without racial engineering. Taxpayers fund public universities. Title VI and the Constitution demand equal treatment, not rotating preferences.
Dhillon’s point lands because it is concrete. A two-tier bar is not holistic review. It is a racial double standard with test scores attached. UCLA Law says it looks at the whole file. The Justice Department says the file still gets weighed by skin color. Only one of those claims can describe how offers actually went out.
Equal rules for every applicant are not optional extras. They are the baseline the law already requires, and the standard any serious law school should meet without a federal letter.
