The University of California Is Still Discriminating by Race
TL;DR
Federal investigators say the UC continues to circumvent repeated bans on racial preferences - including the most recent 2023 Supreme Court decision.
On September 9, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education announced joint findings that Berkeley Law deliberately discriminates against white and Asian applicants, in violation of Title VI and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The mechanics, as the government describes them, are straightforward. Berkeley solicited applicants’ race through a “diversity” essay and a form inviting them to declare a “primary identity,” so that admitted students might be grouped with others who shared it. In 2024 and 2025 combined, half of admitted Black applicants posted LSAT scores below 95 percent of admitted white applicants; more than a third posted scores below 99 percent of them. In 2025, a Black applicant enjoyed 5.8 times the odds of admission of an otherwise comparable white one.
This isn’t a one-off case; it’s part of a pattern of ongoing discrimination at the UC. Back in May, the Justice Department found that UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine had violated the same statute, intentionally discriminating by race in its incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025, each admitted after the Supreme Court had already ruled. The admissions director circulated to committee members a document setting out how the school might continue to meet its diversity goals after the decision: “racial proxies,” and a heavy, knowing reliance on “holistic review."
What makes the University of California’s conduct especially insulting is that it required no Supreme Court ruling to change course. Its own state had already ordered it to stop discriminating thirty years ago.
In 1996, California voters enacted Proposition 209, barring every state institution, the UC system foremost among them, from considering race in admissions. In 2020, at the height of a national racial reckoning, the legislature placed repeal on the ballot as Proposition 16, and its proponents spent millions to carry it. The electorate of one of the most diverse states in the union rejected it, 57 to 43, by more than two million votes.
Told no by its voters in 1996. Told no again in 2020. Told no by the Supreme Court in 2023. And then, by the government’s account, the university went in search of the side door regardless, sorting applicants by "primary identity” and circulating memoranda on racial proxies.
The good news is that more investigations are coming. In March 2025, the Justice Department opened compliance reviews of Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine simultaneously. Berkeley Law and UCLA medicine are merely the first two shoes to drop. Irvine remains an open file. Stanford remains an open file. More letters are coming — and we should welcome their findings as we fight to make sure that everyone is treated equally under the law.