Duke Law School gave Black applicants roughly 3.5 times the chance of admission as Asian applicants with identical academic credentials, the Department of Justice alleges โ defying the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 ban on race-based admissions.
The Trump administration’s Civil Rights Division found evidence Duke Law rigged its admissions process to meet “diversity goals” even after the ruling, according to a DOJ letter sent to the elite law school this week.
“Duke Law School doesn’t get a free pass to discriminate against white and Asian students simply because it thinks it has good intentions.” โ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon
Investigators uncovered what they call a deliberate scheme: Duke Law’s post-SFFA admissions guidance allowed officials to “tag” applicants’ short-answer essays where students discussed how race affected their lives โ then use those tags to justify admitting applicants with weaker academic records.
The median LSAT score for accepted Black applicants was lower than the median score for rejected Asian and White applicants.
“This consistent difference in the test scores between students of different racial groups is substantial and cannot be explained by a coincidence,” the DOJ letter stated. “The magnitude and durability of these preferences across multiple cycles (including post-SFFA) confirm intentional discrimination.”
Internal Duke Law communications show the school began preparing for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard so its admissions process could continue to meet “the Law School’s goals for a broadly diverse student body.”
The workaround? Duke Law encouraged applicants to “highlight different elements” of who they are in diversity essay questions โ then used those responses to identify preferred races for admission.
“Using ‘diversity’ essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race, and this Department is committed to eliminating it everywhere we find it, including in our nation’s law schools,” Dhillon said.
After the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA ruling made race-based admissions unconstitutional, Duke Law continued releasing reports celebrating the school’s diversity. A May 2024 annual review highlighted the number of Latino, Black, and Asian students in the incoming class.
By 2025, the school shifted strategy: the admissions dean suggested Duke Law could gauge diversity by “observing students on campus” rather than compiling formal statistics โ an apparent attempt to maintain racial preferences without creating a paper trail.
The investigation into Duke Law began in April 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on alleged race-based discrimination at dozens of colleges and universities. The DOJ recently issued similar findings against UCLA’s medical school.
A Duke University spokesperson told Fox News the school is “reviewing the letter and its conclusions carefully” and remains “committed to complying with the law.”
The Civil Rights Division’s findings stop short of formal charges but signal the Trump DOJ’s willingness to enforce the Supreme Court’s admissions ruling with teeth โ targeting not just undergraduate programs but elite graduate schools that quietly continued racial preferences under new labels.
