Staff Reports
The Justice Department and the Department of Education just delivered a reality check to UC Berkeley School of Law. Their joint investigation found the school deliberately discriminated against White and Asian applicants in the 2024 and 2025 admission cycles. In plain English: the law school appears to have used race, essay prompts, and other tricks as proxies to favor some groups and hurt others — even after the Supreme Court told schools to stop doing that.
DOJ findings: clear, stark, and statistically ugly
The DOJ’s findings letter lays out hard numbers. After accounting for LSAT and GPA, Black applicants had almost six times the odds of admission compared with comparable White applicants in 2025. Similar gaps showed up in 2024. The department called these patterns “robust and consistent” and said they point to intentional discrimination in violation of Title VI and the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said the conduct shows “a complete disregard for the rule of law.” That’s not legalese — it’s an accusation that the school broke a very clear rule.
“Diversity” turned into a cover story
Berkeley’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, has publicly talked about finding “strong race-neutral justifications” and even hinted schools might use “proxies for race.” Translation: call it diversity, don’t call it race, and hope no one looks too closely. The DOJ says the law school’s application pushed students to explain how they would “contribute diversity,” basically instructing them to signal identity. That’s not nuance. It’s a dodge. Voters in California already banned race-based admissions under Proposition 209, and the Supreme Court sealed the deal nationally with SFFA. Yet here we are, watching a top law school try to thread the needle and get caught doing it.
What happens next — and why it matters
The federal agencies want a voluntary resolution agreement to fix admissions practices. If Berkeley refuses, DOJ can sue and even threaten federal funding. This isn’t academic theater. A firm enforcement action would set a clear precedent for other law and professional schools that thought they could quietly keep using race as a factor. Given DOJ’s recent actions against other schools, this looks like the start of a broader sweep, not a one-off lecture to Berkeley’s dean.
For parents and students who want merit to matter, this is a welcome moment. The law must apply equally, and colleges should stop hiding behind feel-good slogans while breaking the rules. If Berkeley wants to defend admissions on legitimate, race-neutral grounds, fine — show the evidence. If not, the school should expect consequences. Higher education needs less virtue signaling and more respect for fairness and the rule of law. Time to stop the games and start admitting on merit again.
