US DOJ vs. Berkeley Law

From the US Dept. of Justice: The U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced today joint investigative findings that the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law) deliberately discriminates against white and Asian students in its admissions process. Berkeley Law’s discriminatory conduct violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or color, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), which banned race discrimination in higher education.

...The Department’s investigation found that post-SFFA, Berkeley Law uses race, essay prompts, and other tactics to further its admissions diversity goals. For instance, Berkeley’s application asked applicants to specify their racial identity, so that admitted students could be “grouped” with others of the same “primary identity” in class. In other words, Berkeley Law intentionally separates admitted students by race...

Full news release at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joint-investigation-us-justice-department-and-us-department-education-finds-uc-berkeley-law.

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Findings letter at https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1460556/dl.

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From the California Post: ...[Law dean Erwin] Chemerinsky pushed back on the DOJ’s allegations, insisting race plays no role in the law school’s admissions decisions. “University of California, Berkeley School of Law in its admissions decisions scrupulously complies with Proposition 209, federal statutes, and the United States Constitution. Our admissions policy is clear that race is not considered in any way in admissions decisions,” Chemerinsky said in a statement...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/09/09/us-news/uc-berkeley-law-intentionally-discriminated-against-white-asian-applicants-doj/.