The Justice Department has accused Duke University’s law school of unlawfully considering race in admissions. In a findings letter to the school, the department said that while administrators claimed to be race-neutral in admissions, they used other factors as stand-ins for race, including personal essays and whether someone was a first-generation college student.
Background
Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused colleges of using other proxies to maintain racial diversity, which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The department recently found that the medical schools at Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions. It announced in June that it was launching similar investigations into 15 other medical schools.
In its findings against Duke Law, the DOJ said Black or Hispanic applicants were much more likely to be admitted than white or Asian applicants with the same academic credentials. Further, it said, in 2024 and 2025, the median Law School Admissions Test scores of rejected white and Asian applicants exceeded the median scores of admitted Black applicants.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
