UCLA medical school hit with class-action lawsuit for allegedly still using race-based admissions process

The University of California, Los Angeles, medical school was hit with a class-action lawsuit on Thursday for reportedly still employing a race-based admissions process despite a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that race-based programs for college admissions are unconstitutional, Fox News Digital has learned. 

“UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine has continually treated the Students for Fair Admissions ruling as a recommendation, rather than a binding law handed down by the highest court in the land,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chair of Do No Harm, told Fox News Digital. “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.”

Do No Harm, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting against “radical progressive ideology” in the health industry, and nonprofit legal advocacy organization Students for Fair Admissions filed the class-action lawsuit Thursday afternoon on behalf of applicants who allegedly faced “intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process” at UCLA’s medical school, according to the lawsuit.

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“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. 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,” the lawsuit alleges. 

UCLA’s medical school is highly competitive with an acceptance rate of about 3.3%, according to U.S. News and World Report‘s college rankings.

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The suit names a bevy of defendants, ranging from the medical school to the governing board of the University of California’s college system to the associate dean of admissions at the medical school. 

Fox News Digital reached out to UCLA and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA on Thursday afternoon for comment on the lawsuit but did not immediately receive replies.

The suit alleges that the medical school’s admissions process violates the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2023 case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The nation’s highest court ruled that it is unconstitutional to use race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes as it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

President Donald Trump additionally signed an executive order on Jan. 21, one day after his inauguration, that restored “merit-based opportunity” and charged federal agencies with enforcing civil rights laws and “combat” DEI practices. 

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The lawsuit alleges that whistleblowers “with first-hand knowledge” of the school’s dean of admissions rolled out an admissions process plan that requires Geffen “applicants to submit responses that are intended to allow the Committee to glean the applicant’s race, which the medical school later confirms via interviews.”

The admission committee, according to the suit, additionally “routinely and openly discuss race (and racial proxies) and use race as a factor to make admission decisions.”

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The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA is already facing investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services‘ Office for Civil Rights over allegations it discriminates against applicants on the basis of race, color or national origin.

“This investigation reflects the Administration’s commitment to honor the hard work, excellence, and individual achievement of all students in the pipeline for the medical profession – not just those of particular racial backgrounds,” Anthony Archeval, acting director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, said in a press release in March announcing the investigation.

The HHS investigation was sparked by multiple whistleblowers in the admissions office claiming that the school set lower standards for Black and Latino applicants compared to White and Asian counterparts, the Washington Free Beacon reported this month.