Feds sue Yale, allege discrimination against applicants
The Justice Department is suing Yale University after prosecutors found the university was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The Justice Department sued Yale University on Thursday, weeks after prosecutors found the university was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, alleges Yale “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.”
It comes about two months after the Justice Department publicly accused Yale of discrimination saying its investigation found that Asian American and white students have “only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials.”
Yale had denied the allegations, calling them “meritless” and “hasty.”
The action from the Justice Department is the latest by the Trump administration in a long-running effort aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges.
The Justice Department’s investigation — which stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale, Brown and Dartmouth — also found that Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes," officials said.
“All persons who apply for admission to colleges and universities should expect and know that they will be judged by their character, talents, and achievements and not the color of their skin,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, who runs the department’s civil rights division. “To do otherwise is to permit our institutions to foster stereotypes, bitterness, and division.”
In August, the Justice Department demanded that Yale immediately stop and agree not to use race or national origin for upcoming admissions, but officials said the university refused.
The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity and should be limited in time. Schools also bear the burden of showing why their consideration of race is appropriate.
Yale has said its practices comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent and that it considers a multitude of factors and looks at “the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants.”
___
Associated Press writer Collin Binkley in Boston contributed to this report.