The U.S. Department of Justice is accusing the Yale University School of Medicine of discriminatory practices in its medical school admissions process.
In a May 14 letter, Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the department conducted a compliance review to determine whether the Yale School of Medicine complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The federal law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Justice Department said its review found that Yale’s School of Medicine violated this law in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The department listed several examples of the violation, including the Yale Admissions Cycle Committee Retreat 2025 presentation, “Race-Neutral Admissions: Examples from Literature,” which discusses increasing “Minority Physicians.” The department also alleged that Yale conducted interviews in a way that allowed committee members to know applicants’ race and ethnicity and to provide preferences based on those factors. It pointed out that providing benefit to “some applicants but not to others, necessarily advantages the former group at the expense of the latter.”
The department said Black and Hispanic students had a higher chance of being admitted into the medical school based on Yale’s policies, training materials, and communications. In the letter, it noted, “as a result of these practices, highly qualified White, Asian, and other students were denied admission based on their race.” The department also alleged this occurred despite Black and Hispanic students having lower grade-point averages and test scores.
Dhillon also said Black applications were 29 times more likely to land an interview for admission than “an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials,” according to the letter.
“For these reasons, the Department concludes that Yale discriminated on the basis of race for the incoming classes of 2023 through 2025, in violation of Title VI as interpreted by Harvard. Based on its review of Yale’s documents and data, the Department believes that this discrimination is ongoing,” the letter read.
Note that the physician workforce for the Black population is 6% (though they make up 12% of the U.S. population), and for Hispanics it’s 7%, though they make up 20% of the country. In contrast, 21% of physicians are Asian (compared to 6% of the population), and 63% are white (compared to 58%), according to KFF. For its research, the healthy policy organization collected U.S. Physician Workforce data from the Association of American Medical Colleges in 2023.
The department’s proposed resolution is for Yale to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement to ensure compliance with the law.
