“Many of America’s top medical schools appear more concerned about the demographics of their incoming classes than training students to succeed in the profession,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
The department did not name the 15 newly targeted medical schools but noted in a June 4 press release that each of the schools “receives millions of dollars in federal taxpayer funding.” The department says the investigations will seek to determine whether the medical schools follow Title IV of the Civil Rights Act “as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College” – the 2023 landmark case that outlawed race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 deals with discrimination based on race, color or national origin in public schools and university systems and was used to desegregate public school and university systems.
The Trump administration’s expanding probe into medical schools follows its findings in May that the medical schools at University of California at Los Angeles and Yale University “both illegally used race in medical school admissions.” The Trump administration announced in March that it was investigating medical school admissions at Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego.
The American Association of University Professors has described the probe announced in March as a “stunning breach of student privacy and the independence of colleges and universities.” In that probe, the Justice Department asked the schools to turn over applicant-level data, including applicant test scores, GPA, extracurricular activities, essays and demographics. AAUP has urged medical schools to resist the probes by providing minimal information.
Prior research has found that medical schools historically have been discriminatory and tend to exclude students who are poor or who have “marginalized identities.” Researchers have also argued that diversity in the medical profession can ultimately strengthen patient care.
But the Department of Justice argues that it’s discriminatory to give deference to students from different demographics over higher qualified applicants, “especially in professions as critical as medicine, where quality of training should be the top priority,” said Dhillon, the assistant attorney general with the DOJ.
