Trump Admin Accuses UC Berkeley Law School of Racial Discrimination in Admissions
UC Berkeley’s law school illegally discriminated against white and Asian students in its admissions process, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education alleged Wednesday.
The departments’ investigative findings are the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration targeting the state’s public university system — and other top universities nationwide — with threats to cut funding over antisemitism and diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
“The Department finds that Berkeley Law violated Title VI by discriminating against Asian and white applicants based on race when selecting its incoming classes of 2024 and 2025, well after the SFFA decision was issued,” the letter from Harmeet Dhillon, the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, read.
The DOJ is requesting that Berkeley’s law school enter a “voluntary resolution agreement” to ensure that its admissions process is brought into legal compliance.
In the six-page findings letter issued Wednesday, the Department of Justice said it launched a review of UC Berkeley’s admissions practices after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling struck down affirmative action in college admissions and more than 30 years after California outlawed it.
The letter said the discrimination by the school is ongoing and points to university admissions materials, like essay prompts, that the DOJ describes as a “backdoor to solicit applicants’ racial demographics.”
Analysis of the school’s admissions data by federal officials found that the median LSAT scores of Black students admitted in 2024 and 2025 were five points lower than admitted white and Asian students, the letter states.
It also said that UC Berkeley’s law dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, admitted that Berkeley Law practices “unstated affirmative action” in faculty hiring, and accuses him of “using race and racial proxies” in admissions.
Chemerinsky said in a statement that the school of law “scrupulously complies” with both the state and federal laws.
“Our admissions policy is clear that race is not considered in any way,” Chemerinsky said in a statement. Those laws, he said, “do not preclude schools from pursuing diversity so long as they give no preferences based on race. Berkeley Law does not do so.”
The Trump administration has launched dozens of investigations into colleges and universities in 2025, threatening to withhold federal funding from those who don’t comply with an executive order regarding campus antisemitism.
In an article published in the American Association of University Professors’ magazine last spring, UC Irvine law professor Sameer Ashar wrote that “this executive order, along with others prohibiting ‘DEI,’ is an effort by the Trump administration to drain US campuses of their contentious, democratic spirit.”
The AAUP said that since taking office in 2025, the Trump administration “has waged open warfare on higher education.”
Over the last year, a number of schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, have agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements to unfreeze their federal funding, while others have accepted policy changes in line with the administration’s views.
UC Berkeley did not respond to an inquiry about whether it plans to comply with the DOJ’s request to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement to bring its policies into compliance.
“UC Berkeley is committed to ensuring that every student is admitted based on their merit,” a spokesperson for the university said via email. “UC Berkeley will spare no effort to provide ample evidence showing that the university complies with all relevant laws, policies and rules governing admissions.”