Yale School of Medicine Yale School of Medicine
Students walk through Yale University on the day of the Senate hearing with Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, on September 27, 2018 in New Haven, Connecticut. Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982 when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Yana Paskova/Getty Images

Fifteen U.S. medical schools are under federal investigation for possible racial discrimination in admissions, as the Justice Department broadens a nationwide review that already found Yale and UCLA illegally used race in selecting students.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced it has opened 15 new admissions investigations at medical schools that receive substantial federal funding, but it has not publicly named the institutions.

The probes will examine whether the schools' policies comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal funds, according to The Guardian.

Officials said the reviews are also guided by the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred race-conscious college admissions.

The new actions come after separate Justice Department findings that the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale School of Medicine illegally considered race in admissions.

In those cases, investigators concluded that the schools favored Black and Hispanic applicants over white and Asian candidates, including in situations where minority applicants had weaker academic credentials.

In January, the department also moved to join an existing lawsuit against UCLA's medical school that accuses it of continuing to use race or racial proxies in admissions despite federal and state bans, Justice reported.

The complaint, originally brought by groups including Students for Fair Admissions, alleges that UCLA collected detailed race data and used it to shape classes that would "look like" America, while holding white and Asian applicants to higher standards.

Federal lawyers say their intervention aims to enforce constitutional and civil rights protections in medical education.

The Justice Department has stressed that the 15 new matters are investigative and that it has reached no conclusions about whether those schools violated the law.

However, the division noted that each school under review receives millions of $ in taxpayer funds and that findings of unlawful discrimination could affect that funding and lead to court-enforceable agreements, as per Bloomberg.

Topics Yale, Ucla, Admissions