The Standing

A daily, non-partisan record of US democratic norms — and the events that erode them.

    DOJ opens Title VI probes into Stanford, Ohio State, and UC San Diego medical schools

    On March 25, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division opened Title VI compliance-review investigations into the medical schools of Stanford University, the Ohio State University, and the University of California, San Diego, over alleged race discrimination in admissions. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon announced the probes, and the Division sent letters demanding seven years of applicant data — MCAT scores, GPAs, ZIP codes, family ties to alumni or donors, internal DEI communications, and correspondence with pharmaceutical companies — by an April 24, 2026 deadline, citing the schools' federal funding.

    Jurisdiction
    federal
    Location
    Stanford, CA; Columbus, OH; and San Diego, CA

    Abuses documented

    Actors

    • Harmeet K. Dhillon (Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Civil Rights Division)
    • U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division

    On March 25, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division opened Title VI compliance-review investigations into the medical schools of Stanford University, the Ohio State University, and the University of California, San Diego, alleging race discrimination in admissions. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon announced the probes, framing them as a review of "possible race discrimination in medical school admissions" under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin.

    The Division's letters demanded an unusually wide sweep of records going back seven years: applicants' race, MCAT scores, GPAs, home addresses and ZIP codes, family connections to alumni or donors, internal communications about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and correspondence between university officials and pharmaceutical companies about admissions. The schools were given roughly a month to comply, with a response deadline of April 24, 2026, and the demand was backed by the leverage of the schools' dependence on federal funding. The probes followed the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which barred race-conscious admissions.

    This March 25 action was the opening move of a broader Civil Rights Division campaign against medical-school admissions practices. The Division later announced adverse findings against the medical schools of Yale University and UCLA, and on June 4, 2026 expanded the effort to 15 additional, unnamed medical schools (archived separately as federal-politicized-investigations-18c8b67a). Directing the Division — historically the federal government's instrument for protecting marginalized groups from discrimination — to pursue diversity-oriented admissions as the violation, while wielding a sweeping data demand and the threat to federal funding against named institutions, reflects the use of investigative power as an instrument of administration policy rather than neutral, case-by-case enforcement.

    Why we recorded this

    The Civil Rights Division was built to enforce anti-discrimination law on behalf of people shut out of opportunity; here that machinery is turned to treat universities' diversity practices as the violation. What makes this an abuse worth recording is not the existence of a Title VI review but its character: a sweeping demand for seven years of applicant data reaching ZIP codes, donor and alumni connections, internal DEI communications, and pharmaceutical correspondence, compressed into a one-month deadline and backed by the implied threat to essential federal funding. Investigative power deployed this broadly, against named institutions, on a reverse-discrimination theory, functions less as neutral enforcement than as leverage to pressure schools over how they pursue diversity.

    Sources

    1. DOJ Begins Probe of Admissions Practices at Three Medical Schools — NOTUS primary accessed June 8, 2026
    2. US Probes Stanford's Medical School Over Admissions Policy — Bloomberg primary accessed June 8, 2026
    3. Trump administration requests Stanford Medical School admissions data, claiming racial discrimination — The Stanford Daily investigative accessed June 8, 2026
    4. Medical Schools Should Resist the DOJ's Data Probes into Student Admissions — American Association of University Professors secondary accessed June 8, 2026

    See also