DOJ: Duke Law Illegally Considered Race in Admissions

The Justice Department announced Thursday that Duke University School of Law intentionally discriminated based on race in granting and denying admission to its 2023, 2024, and 2025 incoming classes. The finding marks the first time the department has cited a law school for violating the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions, according to AP News.

The department’s Civil Rights Division determined that Duke Law’s conduct violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), which banned race discrimination in higher education, according to the DOJ press release.

Alleged Race Proxies in Admissions

According to the DOJ’s findings, while Duke administrators publicly claimed to be race-neutral in admissions, they used other factors as stand-ins for race, including personal essays and whether an applicant was a first-generation college student. The department said Duke Law’s application included short answer essay questions, and admissions reviewers were instructed to “tag” responses using a “Diversity/Services” tag to capture answers related to “diversity of perspective and experience.” Reviewers were also instructed to use tags to capture applicant characteristics commonly correlated with race, such as being a Pell grant recipient.

“Duke Law School doesn’t get a free pass to discriminate against white and Asian students simply because it thinks it has good intentions,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Using ‘diversity’ essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race.”

Statistical Evidence

The DOJ found that Black or Hispanic applicants were much more likely to be admitted than white or Asian applicants with the same academic credentials. In 2024 and 2025, the median LSAT scores of rejected white and Asian applicants exceeded the median scores of admitted Black applicants. In 2024, the median LSAT scores for admitted Black and Hispanic students were in the 84.2nd and 95.1st percentiles respectively, compared to 97.1st for white and 97.9th for Asian applicants. A review of 2025 applicant-level data showed a Black applicant was about 3.5 times as likely to be admitted compared to an Asian applicant with similar statistics, as Inside Higher Ed reported.

The DOJ also cited Duke Law’s revised Mission Statement, which expressed the goal to “help build and sustain a dynamic legal profession that embodies a commitment” to values including “diversity of perspective and experience” (emphasis the DOJ’s).

Duke’s Response

Duke University said in an emailed statement it was reviewing the letter and is committed to following the law “in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission,” as ABC11 Raleigh-Durham reported. The department said it was seeking to reach a settlement with Duke Law, and if negotiations fail, it will file suit.

Broader Federal Scrutiny

The finding against Duke Law is part of a broader Trump administration effort targeting admissions and diversity policies at elite universities. The DOJ has opened more than two dozen investigations into medical schools’ admissions practices, alleging violations of the Supreme Court’s ban on race-based admissions. The department has released findings against Yale University and UCLA medical schools, as well as UC Davis and UC San Diego medical schools, as Inside Higher Ed’s background reporting detailed.

Duke University had already been under federal scrutiny before the August 2026 DOJ findings. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into Duke’s law journal selection practices, alleging the Duke Law Journal violated the Civil Rights Act in the factors used to select law journal members, according to ABC11’s earlier coverage.

Expert Criticism of DOJ Methodology

Experts have raised concerns about the DOJ’s investigative approach. Beth Gellman-Beer, an 18-year Office for Civil Rights veteran, said admissions data on race can be a starting point for an investigation, but it doesn’t stand alone to prove discrimination. She noted that such investigations would typically include interviews with admissions professionals, which the DOJ letters do not reference.

James Murphy, a senior fellow at Class Action, noted that the admissions datasets are small sample sizes and said the DOJ’s claims that using socioeconomic data in admissions violates federal law represents a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling. “What they want to claim is that that is a proxy for race,” he said. “Well, that is on them to prove that that is the case. There’s nothing in that letter that proves that’s the case.”

What’s Next

The department said it will engage in settlement negotiations with Duke Law to ensure the school’s admissions practices are brought into compliance. If those efforts fail, the department will file suit. The case adds to the ongoing federal scrutiny of race-conscious admissions policies at educational institutions across the country, with implications for how law schools and other graduate programs approach diversity in their admissions processes.