Justice Department Finds Yale School of Medicine Used Race in Admissions for 2023–25 Classes

The Justice Department said Thursday that Yale School of Medicine violated federal civil rights law by using race in admissions for its incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025, despite the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions.

The finding came in a yearlong investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which said in a formal May 14 letter to Yale that the medical school’s admissions process violated Title VI, the federal law that bars race discrimination by programs that receive federal financial assistance. In a press release, the department said “Yale’s leadership intentionally selected applicants based on their race.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in the release: “Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform.”

The department’s Letter of Findings said investigators concluded that Yale discriminated “on the basis of race in the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025.” It said the conclusion was based on internal university documents and communications that, according to the department, showed an intent to keep using race in admissions after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The letter said Yale officials used or studied “racial proxies” and other purportedly race-neutral workarounds aimed at preserving race-based outcomes.

The Justice Department also pointed to its own statistical analysis of admissions results. In one example, for the 2023 entering class, the department said median academic credentials among admitted applicants differed by racial group: Black applicants admitted had a median 3.88 GPA and 517 MCAT score, compared with 3.97 GPA and 523 MCAT for Asian applicants, 3.96 GPA and 523 MCAT for white applicants, and 3.92 GPA and 518 MCAT for Hispanic applicants. Those figures are from the department’s analysis in its findings letter.

The letter also said: “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.” The department said it believes the discrimination is ongoing.

For now, the department is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement with Yale to bring the medical school’s admissions practices into compliance with federal law. But it warned that if voluntary compliance is not achieved, it may pursue enforcement action. The department said Yale receives direct federal assistance, giving it jurisdiction to conduct the Title VI compliance review.

As of about 5:35 p.m. UTC Thursday, Yale and Yale School of Medicine had not posted an official public response on Yale’s news pages. The Justice Department’s finding is an administrative determination, not a court judgment, and no court had ruled on the Yale medical school matter as of Thursday.

The legal backdrop is the Supreme Court’s June 29, 2023, decision in the Students for Fair Admissions cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina. That ruling sharply restricted the use of race in college and university admissions, and the Justice Department said Yale’s medical school violated Title VI as interpreted by that decision.

The Yale finding is also part of a broader federal push on medical school admissions. The Justice Department announced a similar finding against UCLA’s medical school on May 6. In a separate matter, the department also sued Yale in 2020 over undergraduate admissions.