In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, which prohibited government, such as public universities, from discriminating or granting preferences based on race, sex, or ethnicity. After its approval, the language of the proposition became part of the state constitution. In 2020, an effort to overturn 209 was soundly defeated by voters.
In 2023, SCOTUS found that the admissions procedures at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating in favor of black and Hispanic applicants and against Asian and white applicants. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
One would think that the one-two punch of the state constitution and clear legal guidance from the nation’s top court would stop California universities from racially discriminating against students in their admissions process. That thought, however, would be wrong.
It turns out that state universities have crafted schemes to disguise their continued practice of discriminating in favor of certain students and against others based on their race.
In May, the Justice Department issued findings to its inquiry into the admissions process at UCLA’s medical school. After reviewing the medical school’s internal documents, information, and policies, the Department concluded that the school demonstrated “intent to use race in admissions despite the [Supreme Court’s] Harvard ruling.”
For example, the Department found that the top admissions official at the school circulated a document that outlined “workarounds to achieve medical school ‘diversity goals,’ despite the prohibition on race preferences articulated in Harvard.”
These workarounds “include racial proxies and emphasizing ‘holistic review practices’ as bases for admitting students.” As the Department noted, however, “Discrimination on the basis of racial proxies is offensive to our nation’s Constitution and laws, just as direct racial discrimination is.”
Further, the Department concluded that the school was hiding its race-based admissions practices: “The updated 2025 admissions guidance presentation has several slides with only graphics that discuss issues such as ‘implicit bias’ and promoting diversity. This suggests that admissions personnel are given verbal instructions during this presentation encouraging the use of race/ethnicity in admissions, and such instructions are not put in writing.”
In addition to test scores and GPAs, the school used a so-called “holistic” approach to admissions that used “a myriad of factors that appear unrelated to medicine,” including “race’ and ‘national origin,’ both of which are prohibited by Title VI [of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964].”
The Department found that one admissions official “used intimidation and shaming tactics to pressure the admissions committee to unlawfully consider race in their decisions.”
The results of these discriminatory procedures showed up in the admissions data. The test scores “for the incoming class of 2024 exhibit significant differences across racial lines,” with black and Hispanic admittees having significantly lower test scores and GPAs than Asians and whites.
The bottom line, said the Department, is that the school “discriminated against other applicants to benefit preferred races classes of Black and Hispanic.” Crucially, “the Department believes that this discrimination is ongoing.”
Racial discrimination in admissions, however, is not limited to UCLA. In July, the Justice Department issued a report finding similar racial discrimination at UC San Diego’s medical school.
According to the Department, “The evidence shows that San Diego Med deliberately discriminated against applicants because of their race both before and after [the Harvard decision].” Specifically, the school “has sought to racially diversify its student body by using race and race-correlated proxies even in the face of federal law and California’s longstanding ban on affirmative action.”
“To racially diversify its classes,” the Department found, “San Diego Med created an evaluation process that uses ‘hardship’ as a racial proxy, specifically to achieve its diversity agenda.” Using “hardship” as a proxy for underrepresented minorities such as blacks and Hispanics, the school purposely increased the “hardship’ admissions by de-emphasizing test scores and GPAs “and prioritizing non-objective criteria, such as ‘applicants who exemplify the personal and professional attributes . . . in alignment with the school’s mission, vision, and values.”
The result: “San Diego Med admissions rates for black applicants were more than double the admissions rates for white applicants for the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025.”
Worse, “In San Diego Med’s incoming 2025 class, the disparities between the academic qualifications of admitted students in different racial groups continued and even widened compared to [pre-Harvard 2023] classes.
The school’s admissions data showed that “a black or Hispanic student had a substantially higher likelihood of being admitted than a white or Asian student with the same academic credentials.”
Importantly, “The consistent difference in test scores between students of different racial groups is substantial and cannot be explained by coincidence, and despite the Department’s requests, San Diego Med provided no evidence to explain the discrepancies.”
Like at UCLA, the Department concluded that UC San Diego’s medical school “has intentionally discriminated against applicants by granting and denying admissions based on their race.”
What the UCLA and UCSD cases demonstrate is that, social justice warriors in higher education are willing defy state and federal laws and court rulings in order to impose and implement race-based Marxist equity policies that discriminate in favor of supposedly oppressed groups such as blacks and Hispanics and discriminate against supposed oppressor groups such as whites and Asians.
Marxist racism will not be defeated by a quick strike, but as the Justice Department’s in-depth investigations indicate, will require drawn-out trench warfare against school after discriminating school.
Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He is the co-author of the upcoming PRI book The Great Equity Epidemic: Students, Parents, and Educators Reveal How DEI Is Destroying American Education.