The Justice Department said Thursday that Duke University’s law school had discriminated in admissions, expanding the Trump administration’s crusade against institutions it contends illegally reject white and Asian students.
The department’s findings, detailed in a six-page letter, came after it announced similar accusations against medical schools at Yale and within the University of California system.
The Trump administration has sought to enforce a stringent interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down race-conscious admissions programs.
Duke used “ostensibly race-neutral tools” to seek racial diversity in its law school, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, wrote in her letter to a lawyer for the university.
Ms. Dhillon pointed to a Justice Department analysis of Duke data that she said suggested that Black or Hispanic applicants were much more likely to be offered admission than white or Asian students with similar academic records.
In a statement on Thursday, a Duke spokesperson said the university was reviewing the Justice Department’s letter.
“Duke is committed to complying with the law and will continue to do so in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission,” the statement said.
The university has spent months quietly facing the Trump administration, which last year raised concerns about appointments to the student-run law journal and what it described as “systematic racial discrimination” in Duke’s health system.
Thursday’s letter from Ms. Dhillon shoved Duke into the administration’s growing spotlight on admissions.
When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the Supreme Court’s 2023 opinion on affirmative action, he declared that any applicant “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.” He said, though, that the court’s opinion should not be “construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”
The Trump administration insists that the court’s opinion essentially banned any effort to consider race in college admissions. Under a portion of her letter titled “intent to discriminate,” Ms. Dhillon cited a Duke policy that said the law school could consider applicants’ “discussion of how race affected their life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise” — a near replication of part of the chief justice’s opinion.
Ms. Dhillon wrote that Duke’s admissions process had elevated “personal background variables commonly correlated with race,” such as being classified as a Pell grant recipient or a first-generation college student, and that such considerations were among those that had “operated as material race-related proxies in admissions outcomes.”
Ms. Dhillon concluded her letter by saying the department wished to reach “a voluntary resolution agreement” with Duke “to ensure that admissions practices are brought into legal compliance.”
It used the same language in a May letter about Yale’s medical school. Yale has been in talks with the government about a settlement, though campus leaders have faced significant pushback to the prospect of the university reaching an agreement with the Justice Department.
The Justice Department’s announcement emerged less than an hour before the Education Department said it had opened investigations into accounts of antisemitic harassment at San Jose State University and San Francisco State University. Many of the Trump administration’s inquiries into universities have focused on antisemitism or the use of race in admissions, though the Education Department has also pressured San Jose State over its policies related to athletic participation by transgender people.
Bobby King, a spokesman for San Francisco State, said the university was reviewing the allegations that prompted the federal government’s review, adding that “antisemitism and discrimination have no place” at the school.
“We take the concerns raised by members of our Jewish community seriously and remain committed to ensuring that every member of our community can study, teach, work and participate in university life free from discrimination and harassment prohibited by law and university policy,” he said.
San Jose State said it would respond to the inquiry through the Education Department’s process.
“The university has consistently and repeatedly denounced antisemitism,” the school said in a statement, which added that “providing an environment free of antisemitism and unlawful discrimination in any form remains a top priority.”
