Berkeley School of Law has discriminated against whites and Asians in admissions. That’s what the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education concluded this week.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination on the basis of race. The Supreme Court also ruled 6-3 in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) that racial preferences admissions policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Berkeley Law School’s deliberate efforts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA demonstrate a complete disregard for the rule of law,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department will continue to aggressively pursue compliance from schools who attempt to racially manipulate their student bodies in violation of federal law.”
The simplest way to stop discriminating by race is to stop discriminating by race. But according to the government, Berkeley Law continues to ask students to state their race. Why?
As expected, the bias is in favor of black applicants over whites and Asians. Colleges and universities that receive federal funds are subject to civil rights laws.
Perhaps one day, Americans will know what it’s like to be judged on the content of their character — rather than the color of their skin.
Photo credit: By Bernt Rostad – Flickr: The Sather Gate, CC BY 2.0, Link
