Duke University illegally discriminated against white, Asian applicants, Justice Department finds

Duke University School of Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating based on race in admissions, the Justice Department said yesterday.

Black and Hispanic applicants were far more likely to be admitted than white or Asian applicants with the same grades and test scores. For example, “rejected white and Asian applicants had higher median LSAT scores than admitted black students in 2024 and 2025,” notes The College Fix.

Duke also encouraged students to play up their race in the essays included in their college applications.

When students applied, they were given short-answer essay questions where they discussed how they fit the school’s goal of “diversity of perspective and experience.”.

“Administrators told staff to ‘tag’ responses related to diversity and other factors often linked to race,” reports The College Fix.

“Thus, while Duke Law’s published policies assert that admissions reviewers did not see racial demographic data, Duke Law directed its admissions staff to highlight applicant information that could be used to advance Duke Law’s racial diversity goal,” said the Justice Department in a press release.

In June, the Justice Department found that the University of California, Davis School of Medicine openly violated a 2023 Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in admissions, by creating the “‘Davis Scale,’ which ranks an applicant based” partly on whether the applicant is deemed racially disadvantaged, while reducing the role of GPA and MCAT scores.

In May, the Justice Department concluded that Yale School of Medicine “intentionally selected applicants based on their race.” For years, Black and Hispanic applicants have been admitted with significantly lower grades and test scores than white and Asian applicants.

Currently, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating dozens of universities for “race-exclusionary practices” in their graduate programs. The universities are suspected of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act through partnerships with “The Ph.D. Project,” which gives students of certain races networking opportunities. The investigation began after conservative activist Christopher Rufo flagged the program in his social media posts.

Recently, the Education Department repealed its disparate-impact regulations. Investigations launched under those regulations led some school districts to make discipline decisions based on race. Under Obama and Biden, the Education Department used disparate-impact regulations to undermine school safety and pressure school systems to allow more misbehavior by minority students. Race-conscious curbs on suspensions led to violence in some school districts.

In other news, several universities such as Princeton recently reinstated standardized test requirements, which they had eliminated in an effort to increase the number of black students they admit.

Princeton is following in the path of several other Ivy League schools. In 2024, Yale University, Dartmouth College, and Brown University “brought back the requirement after they had ditched it in part by arguing the tests advance systemic race inequity,” reported The College Fix.

Last year, the University of Pennsylvania announced it would once again consider standardized test results in admissions, after University of Pennsylvania researchers found that considering both standardized test scores and grades does a better job in predicting student success than only considering grades.

Similarly, Yale University noted that “research from before and after the pandemic has consistently demonstrated that, among all application components, test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades.”