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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said it had opened 15 new civil rights investigations over “potential race discrimination” in medical schools’ admissions practices.
- The agency did not name the colleges under investigation and did not immediately respond to questions. In its press release, it said each medical school facing a probe receives millions of dollars in federal funding.
- The bevy of new investigations come after the DOJ last month alleged two medical schools at high-profile, selective colleges — Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles — had violated civil rights law by giving Black and Hispanic applicants an advantage in admissions.
Dive Insight:
Under the second Trump administration, the DOJ has devoted significant effort to enforcing Title VI — the law banning federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin — through the lens of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-conscious admissions.
The federal agency has now teed up medical schools to be one of its biggest targets.
In March, the DOJ reportedly launched Title VI probes into medical school admissions at three institutions: Ohio State University, Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego.
The agency has not commented publicly on those investigations, which were first reported by The New York Times.
“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,” said Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s civil rights division, in a statement Thursday.
