The medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, is accused of maintaining race-based admissions practices in a lawsuit filed on Thursday, in spite of the 2023 Supreme Court decision ruling affirmative action unconstitutional.
Do No Harm (DNH), an advocacy organization aimed at taking harmful, left-wing ideologies out of medical practice and schools, along with nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions (the group behind the case that saw affirmative action overturned) and rejected medical school applicant Kelly Mahoney, filed the class-action suit on behalf of of medical school applicants who said they faced “intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process.”
“UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine has continually treated federal law as a recommendation,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, DNH chairman, said in a press release. “Do No Harm is fighting for all the students who have been racially discriminated against by UCLA under the guise of political progress. All medical schools must abide by the law of the land and prioritize merit, not immutable characteristics, in admissions.”
The lawsuit lays out statistics it alleges show a racialized admissions regime at the purportedly prestigious school with a 3.3 percent admissions rate.
“The numbers show that UCLA is engaged in intentional racial balancing. Between 2020 and 2023, the percentage of white and Asian applicants to Geffen was consistently around 73% of the total applicant pool,” the lawsuit states. “Yet, the percentage of matriculants to Geffen who are white and Asian plummeted: 65.7% in 2020, 57.1% in 2021, 57.8% in 2022, and 53.7% in 2023.”
In addition to being filed against the medical school itself, the suit names numerous other defendants, including the governing board of the University of California system, the dean of admissions at the medical school, and the president of the UC system.
Plaintiffs allege that the UC system and the medical school itself have “publicly expressed their intent to racially balance the class” and that medical school Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero has “both publicly and privately said she uses race as a factor in making admission decisions.”
“Whistleblowers confirm that the admissions committee, either led or intimidated by Lucero, use all available methods to glean an applicant’s race, openly discuss applicants’ race, and use race to hold students to different standards based on race,” the lawsuit continues.
The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his second day in office that directed federal agencies to enforce civil rights law, combat diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology, and restore “merit-based opportunity” — all of which are counter to an affirmative action regime.
UCLA’s medical school is also under investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for its race-based admissions scheme. HHS subsequently issued a “Dear Colleague” letter telling all medical schools that “relying on race-based criteria, racial stereotypes, and facially neutral criteria that operates as a pretext for race are all prohibited under Title VI and Section 1557, including when diversity and racial-balancing are the aims.”
HHS Office for Civil Rights Acting Director Anthony Archeval said at the time that the clarification “protects students and patients by ensuring health care providers, and those in the health professions pipeline, are selected based on merit and clinical skills, not race.”
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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