The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded at the end of an investigation that Duke University School of Law has been discriminating against individuals based on race in admissions, which is unconstitutional and illegal.
DOJ contended that the law school must stop the racial discrimination or face cuts to federal funding or worse: a federal lawsuit.
In defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared racial preferences in admissions unconstitutional, the law school continued to discriminate against individuals based on the color of their skin. The law school “emphasized racial diversity in admissions and engaged in a deliberate effort to preserve race-based outcomes for its incoming classes.”
The law school found a sneaky way to allow applicants to reveal their race: “diversity” essays. Reviewers on the admissions committee “were then instructed to ‘tag’ responses to these short answer questions.”
Tagging these responses allowed the committee to begin the discrimination process. An excerpt (emphasis added):
As a result, a black or Hispanic applicant has a substantially higher likelihood of admission to Duke Law than a white or Asian applicant with the same academic credentials. When qualifications are not similar, the result is starker: in 2024 and 2025, the median LSAT scores of rejected white and Asian applicants exceeded the median LSAT scores of admitted black applicants.
Duke University receives taxpayers’ money, which means they’re subject to federal law that bars racial discrimination. If the bureaucrats who run the school don’t comply, DOJ will sue.
“Duke Law School doesn’t get a free pass to discriminate against white and Asian students simply because it thinks it has good intentions,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division. “Using ‘diversity’ essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race, and this Department is committed to eliminating it everywhere we find it, including in our nation’s law schools.”
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