Overview
- The Justice Department announced Wednesday that its Civil Rights Division concluded after a six-month probe that UC Davis School of Medicine used race-based methods in admissions by adopting a so-called “Davis Scale” to rank socioeconomic disadvantages.
- Documents in the DOJ review show UC Davis leaders discussed “skirting” the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions by using family income, parental education and underserved-area status as proxies for race.
- The department’s statistical analysis of 2023–2025 admissions found that about 93% of white and some Asian admittees had MCAT scores at or above the average Black admittee and that Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted at rates up to six times higher than white and Asian applicants.
- UC Davis has strongly rejected the DOJ’s conclusions, calling its process rigorous, individualized and lawful, and the department said it will first seek a voluntary settlement and will sue the school if talks fail.
- The UC Davis finding follows recent DOJ determinations at other major medical schools and raises legal questions about Title VI, the Supreme Court’s SFFA ruling and how schools can consider life experiences while training physicians for underserved communities.