LOS ANGELES - UCLA’s medical school has been hit with a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that the David Geffen School of Medicine illegally discriminated against admissions candidates based on race, depriving whites and Asians of equal treatment.
The advocacy groups Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions, along with Kelly Mahoney, who was denied entry by the medical school, are plaintiffs in the legal action, which was filed May 8 in the Central District of California. The school has engaged in a policy of race-based admissions that flies in the face of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the complaint states.
The lawsuit alleges that under the racial goals of the school’s dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, the school and its admissions committee members have been participating in discrimination through admissions and hiring decisions.
“Whistleblowers with first-hand knowledge of Lucero’s admissions practices have now come forward,” the lawsuit says. “They report that, under the guise of ‘holistic’ review, Geffen requires applicants to submit responses that are intended to allow the committee to glean the applicant’s race, which the medical school later confirms via interviews.”
The plaintiffs also include statistics that they say show the medical school has engaged in “intentional racial balancing.” From 2020 to 2023, the share of white and Asian applicants to the school represented 73% of the total number of applicants, according to the lawsuit. But the percentage of enrolled white and Asian students has been declining, from 65.7% in 2020 to 53.7% in 2023, the complaint states.
“UCLA’s illegal racial discrimination has harmed and is continuing to harm applicants, including plaintiffs and their members,” the lawsuit says. “In this race-based system, all applicants are deprived of their right to equal treatment and the opportunity to pursue their lifelong dream of becoming a doctor because of utterly arbitrary criteria. Plaintiffs are entitled to relief.”
The Geffen School of Medicine denied the assumptions and allegations outlined in the litigation.
“UCLA’s medical school is committed to fair processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” a spokesperson for the medical school told the Southern California Record in an email.
The lawsuit, however, says Lucero and her admissions panel routinely admit black applicants with below-average test scores. At the same time, white and Asian applicants need to present stellar scores to be considered serious candidates for admission, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also points out that California’s Proposition 209 bars the use of race in university admissions and that in March, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services opened a probe into the school’s admissions policies.
“Do No Harm is fighting for all the students who have been racially discriminated against by UCLA under the guise of political progress,” Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of plaintiff Do No Harm, said in a prepared statement. “All medical schools must abide by the law of the land and prioritize merit, not immutable characteristics, in admissions.”
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the UCLA medical school’s admissions practices unconstitutional, to issue a permanent injunction barring defendants from considering race in admissions decisions, to admit plaintiff Mahoney into the school and to certify the lawsuit as a class action. The plaintiffs are also seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages, attorney fees and the disgorgement of federal financial aid the school received during the time when it was allegedly not complying with federal laws.