On June 10, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said Sacramento-based University of California Davis School of Medicine discriminated based on race in its admissions process, the third such finding against a major medical school in two months.
Five things to know:
1. The six-month investigation found the medical school violated the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned affirmative action in higher education. According to the department, school leadership at UC Davis “openly boasted” about “skirting” the ruling.
2. The school developed what it called the “Davis Scale,” which ranks applicants based on perceived socioeconomic “disadvantages” — including family income, parental education and whether a student is from an “underserved area” — while strategically adjusting the weight of GPA and MCAT scores. The Justice Department characterized these factors as racial proxies.
3. A review of admissions data from 2023 to 2025 found 93% of white and certain Asian admittees had MCAT scores at or above the average Black admittee. Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted at rates up to six times higher than white and Asian applicants, despite having on average lower academic qualifications, according to the department.
By 2024, Davis Med had become the third most racially diverse medical school in the country, behind only historically Black colleges and universities — even as researchers from the school co-authored a 2025 JAMA study finding that racial and ethnic diversity declined nationally in medical school admissions following the Supreme Court ruling.
4. UC Davis rejected the findings. “UC Davis School of Medicine strongly disagrees with any characterization of its admissions practices as discriminatory or inconsistent with applicable law,” the school said June 10. “The report’s findings do not accurately reflect the school’s rigorous, individualized and merit-based admissions process and our firm commitment to complying with applicable federal and state antidiscrimination laws.”
5. The Justice Department said it will seek a voluntary settlement with the school to bring its practices into compliance. If negotiations fail, it will sue. The department has reported similar findings against UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and Yale University School of Medicine. On June 4, the department said it has also opened investigations into 15 additional unnamed medical schools.
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