Overview
- Federal investigators from the Justice Department and Education Department issued findings Wednesday that the UC Berkeley School of Law discriminated against white and Asian applicants when building its 2024 and 2025 classes.
- The departments’ analysis found large racial disparities in admissions odds, reporting that Black applicants had about 6.5 times the odds of admission in 2024 and 5.8 times the odds in 2025 compared with comparable white applicants.
- Investigators pointed to application features such as an optional racial‑identity prompt and essay language and cited public remarks by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as evidence that race or race‑revealing proxies influenced selection decisions.
- Berkeley and Dean Chemerinsky deny the allegations and say the school follows California’s Proposition 209 and federal law; the Justice Department is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement and has warned it will sue if negotiations fail.
- The finding is part of a broader push by the administration to enforce the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race‑conscious admissions and could lead to litigation, federal funding reviews, and changes to how public schools use essays and identity questions in holistic review.