The federal class action lawsuit accuses UCLA medical schools and various university staff of using race as a factor in enrollment despite state law and the Supreme Court of Justice to break positive behaviour.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court for the Central District of California, was filed by a group of activists and was established in 2022 to combat positive medical behavior. A fair enrollment student, a nonprofit organization that won a Supreme Court lawsuit against Harvard’s Affirmative Action Program. Kelly Mahoney, a university graduate who was rejected by the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
According to the lawsuit, legal measures were taken to stop medical school and UCLA officials from engaging in deliberate discrimination based on race and ethnicity in the hospitalization process.
UCLA’s medical school did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Citing the unnamed “whistleblower,” the lawsuit requires applicants to submit responses aimed at enabling the committee to collect the applicant’s race, Jennifer Lucero, associate dean of admission.
They also argued that Lucero and members of the Admissions Committee discussed race “regularly and openly” and used it as a factor in making admission decisions.
Lucero did not immediately respond to requests to comment via email.
“For all students who are racially discriminated against by UCLA under the guise of political progress, Do No Harm does no harm,” Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb said in a news release. “All medical schools must comply with the laws of the land and prioritize merits rather than constant features in their entry.”
The lawsuit comes as UCLA and other UC campuses are facing surveillance by the Trump administration due to potential “illegal DEIs” in their admissions practices.
In late March, the Justice Department said it would look into UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and Berkeley, California, suggesting schools would ban the use of race as a factor in assessing university applicants, including state law and US Supreme Court precedents.
A UC spokesman said in a statement about the investigation in March that UC ceased the use of race on admission when Prop. 209, which banned the consideration of race in public education, employment and contracts, came into effect in 1997. Since then, “UC has implemented admissions practices to comply with the law.”
Separately at the time, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was investigating “major medical schools in California.” It determines whether to discriminate based on the race, color, or national origin of admission. An HHS official previously reported that the investigation was centered around the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
In response to that March announcement, UCLA said, “We will fully cooperate with their investigation.”
The lawsuit alleges on Thursday that Lucero and the Admissions Committee routinely recognize black applicants with sub-average GPAs and MCATs or medical college admissions test scores.
According to the lawsuit, there is no do harm, but at least one member who applied to Geffen is denied and “is ready to reapply if the court orders the defendant to halt discrimination and cancel the effects of past discrimination.” A fair admission student has at least one member applying to medical school.
“In this race-based system, every applicant is deprived of the right to appoint all opportunities to pursue their lifelong dream of becoming a physician due to an irrelevant standards.”
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