The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that the University of California, Davis School of Medicine "discriminates based on race in its admissions process", the latest in a growing string of federal findings that elite medical schools quietly kept racial preferences alive after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023.

The DOJ's Civil Rights Division reached its conclusion after a six-month investigation into admissions practices at Davis Med, reviewing data spanning 2023 to 2025. The department alleged the school didn't just maintain the status quo after the high court's landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, it engineered new tools to get around it.

At the center of the allegation: a scoring mechanism the DOJ calls the "Davis Scale," which the school allegedly created to admit "underrepresented minorities" while maintaining the appearance of compliance with federal law. The Justice Department said internal documents showed school leadership "openly boasted" about the workaround.

The 'skirting' scheme, in the school's own words

The DOJ's findings paint a picture of deliberate evasion. The department said documents provided by Davis Med itself reveal that administrators discussed how to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling by substituting race with class-based variables that functioned as racial proxies.

"Documents provided by Davis Med show that its leadership openly boasted about 'skirting' the Supreme Court's ruling by using certain class-based 'socioeconomic variables' or 'disadvantages' as proxies for race (e.g., family income, parental education, or being from an 'underserved area')."

The result, the DOJ said, was stark. By 2024, Davis Med had become the third most racially diverse medical school in the country, behind only historically black universities. That outcome alone might raise questions. But the department went further, alleging that the admissions data showed black and Hispanic applicants were admitted at rates up to six times higher than white and Asian individuals.

The DOJ also flagged a significant gap in academic qualifications. The department stated that 93 percent of white and certain Asian admittees had MCAT scores at or above the average black admittee, a disparity that, in the government's telling, points to a system where race, not merit, tipped the scales.

Dhillon: 'Unabashed contempt for the rule of law'

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, did not hold back. She framed the school's conduct as both legally defiant and dangerous to patients.

"Davis Med's actions reflect both unabashed contempt for the rule of law and plain disregard for the potential public health consequences of putting race over merit, skill, and competence. The Department will not allow schools to violate federal law without consequence."

That last line carried a specific threat. The DOJ said it will pursue settlement negotiations with any school it has found in violation. If a school refuses to settle, the department will sue. Medical schools, the DOJ noted, receive substantial federal financial assistance and are therefore bound by federal non-discrimination laws.

The administration has shown a willingness to use the Justice Department as an enforcement tool across multiple fronts, from suing states that block ICE enforcement operations to pursuing fraud referrals against state-level officials. The UC Davis finding fits a broader pattern of federal action against institutions that treat Supreme Court rulings as suggestions rather than binding law.

UC Davis pushes back

The school did not accept the DOJ's conclusions. UC Davis published a statement saying it was "disappointed by the report and its conclusions" and directly contested the department's characterization of its admissions practices.

"UC Davis School of Medicine strongly disagrees with any characterization of its admissions practices as discriminatory or inconsistent with applicable law. The report's findings do not accurately reflect the school's rigorous, individualized, and merit-based admissions process and our firm commitment to complying with applicable federal and state antidiscrimination laws."

The school also invoked its mission, stating it is "fully committed to meeting the critical healthcare needs of California, particularly those in underserved and under-resourced areas." That language mirrors the same rationale universities have long used to justify race-conscious admissions, serving disadvantaged communities. The question now is whether that rationale, dressed in socioeconomic language, still amounts to the same unlawful practice the Supreme Court banned.

The tension between the DOJ's findings and UC Davis's denial sets up a potential legal confrontation. If settlement talks fail, the case could end up in federal court, where a judge would weigh the school's internal documents against its public claims of colorblind admissions.

A pattern across elite medical schools

UC Davis is not the first medical school to face this kind of scrutiny. The DOJ said it concluded last month that UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and Yale University School of Medicine allegedly engaged in similar practices, using proxy variables to preserve racial preferences after the Supreme Court's 2023 decision made explicit race-based admissions unconstitutional.

Three elite medical schools, all caught in the same alleged scheme, within weeks of each other. The pattern suggests the post-Students for Fair Admissions workaround was not an isolated improvisation at one campus but a coordinated institutional response across higher education.

The Supreme Court continues to shape the legal landscape around executive and institutional authority, and the enforcement of its 2023 affirmative action ruling now ranks among the most consequential tests of whether the judiciary's decisions actually change behavior on the ground.

For years, critics of affirmative action warned that universities would find ways to preserve racial preferences no matter what the courts said. The DOJ's findings suggest those warnings were well-founded. The "Davis Scale" and its equivalents at other schools look less like good-faith compliance and more like an elaborate end-run around a ruling the institutions never intended to follow.

Federal dollars, federal rules

The DOJ made a point of reminding medical schools that their federal funding comes with strings attached. "Medical schools receive substantial federal financial assistance and are subject to federal non-discrimination laws," the department stated. "The Department will continue to monitor and ensure their compliance with federal law."

That's the leverage. Schools that take federal money, and virtually all of them do, cannot selectively ignore the legal conditions that come with it. The same principle has driven other recent Justice Department actions against officials and institutions accused of sidestepping federal requirements.

The open question is whether the DOJ's enforcement campaign will produce real compliance or just more sophisticated evasion. UC Davis's defiant response, insisting its process is "rigorous, individualized, and merit-based" even as the DOJ cites the school's own documents boasting about skirting the law, suggests the university system is not ready to concede.

If the administration follows through on its promise to litigate, the resulting cases could establish precedent that makes proxy-based racial preferences as legally toxic as the explicit kind. That would be a significant development for every university in the country, not just the three medical schools currently in the DOJ's sights.

The administration has already moved attorneys and resources to accelerate enforcement in other areas of federal law. Whether it applies the same intensity to the admissions fight will determine whether the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling means anything in practice.

Merit vs. mission

UC Davis framed its admissions practices as serving California's healthcare needs. The DOJ framed them as racial discrimination dressed in neutral language. Both sides now have their positions on the record.

But the DOJ's most damaging allegation may be the simplest one: the school's own leaders bragged about getting around the law. If that claim holds up, and it's drawn from documents the school itself provided, then the "merit-based" defense becomes difficult to sustain.

Admitting students at six times the rate of other racial groups, with measurably lower academic qualifications, while internal memos celebrate "skirting" a Supreme Court ruling, that is not a close call. It is the kind of institutional arrogance that invites exactly the federal scrutiny these schools now face.

The Supreme Court said race cannot be the deciding factor in admissions. Some schools heard the ruling and immediately set about proving they could ignore it. The Justice Department is now telling them the era of clever workarounds is over.

Whether the schools believe it is another matter. But the patients who will one day sit across from these doctors deserve to know their physician earned the seat on merit, not because an admissions office found a creative way to break the law.