17. Department of Justice · Notable
Reorganize the Civil Rights Division to prosecute DEI discrimination
Printed page 562 17. Department of Justice
“Reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness. … The Civil Rights Division should spend its first year under the next Administration using the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements.”
What has happened
- Partially done
After a compliance review, the Division found that UCLA School of Law violated Title VI by discriminating against Asian and white applicants for its 2023, 2024 and 2025 classes. It said it would negotiate a settlement and sue if that failed. It is the fourth admissions finding against a medical or law school since June 2026, after UC Davis, UC San Diego and George Washington medical schools, and these are institutions of higher education, which the Quote names. Still, findings followed by settlement talks, with no suit on record, are not yet the prosecutorial campaign the Quote measures against.
- Partially done
The Division found that the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences intentionally discriminated by race in admitting its 2024 and 2025 classes, in violation of Title VI. Settlement talks followed, with suit if they failed. This is the third admissions finding in the series.
- Partially done
The Division found that the UC San Diego School of Medicine used race in admissions in violation of Title VI and SFFA. It said it was negotiating a settlement and would sue if that failed. This is the second admissions finding in the series, and no suit has followed.
- Partially done
The Division is now running DEI compliance reviews of recipients: it closed one against Minnesota after the state repealed a grant program whose eligibility criteria the department called unlawful. Against the Quote's benchmark — the full force of federal prosecutorial resources turned on all state and local governments, universities, corporations and private employers within the first year — this is enforcement against individual recipients through funding conditions, not a prosecutorial campaign.
- Partially done
After a six-month investigation, the Division found that the UC Davis School of Medicine discriminates on the basis of race in admissions, in violation of SFFA. It is the first of the Division's post-SFFA admissions findings against a medical or law school, and these are institutions of higher education, which the Quote names. It is a finding, not a prosecution.
- Partially done
The Division's docket turned over in public: it closed the previous administration's police pattern-or-practice investigations and withdrew the proposed Louisville and Minneapolis consent decrees, the clearest published sign of the refocusing the Quote asks for.
- Attempted
The Attorney General set the Division's new charge: every component was ordered to strip race- and sex-based preferences from its consent decrees, settlement agreements, litigation positions, grants, procurements and guidance, to narrow the use of disparate-impact theories, and to report by March 15, 2025 on terminated DEI programs and on grantees funded for DEI work since January 2021. A directive; the Division's docket had not yet changed.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Overlaps #1562 (Chapter 17, researched) on the underlying instruments; this item is leveled on what happened to the Civil Rights Division specifically.
- Reviewed 2026-10-05. The UCLA Law release turned up among the federal records we keep and search. We opened the release and the findings letter linked from it (justice.gov/opa/media/1463656/dl, an 8-page scanned PDF, read as images). The letter is dated 2026-10-01 and is a finding of violation (“the Department finds that UCLA Law violated Title VI”), not the opening of an investigation. That earned a partial event of its own above, at the same Status: each step in a sequence gets its own event. The item does not move up, because no suit has been filed. Our first reading called this the Division’s first university finding. It is only the first in this item’s record: the Division made university Title VI findings in 2025 (UCLA, 2025-07-29; George Washington, 2025-08-12, both on antisemitism). The search also turned up three earlier admissions findings this item did not carry. We opened those releases and gave each its own event: UC Davis Medicine (2026-06-10), UC San Diego Medicine (2026-07-20) and GWU Medicine (2026-08-27). None of them changes the Status, because no suit has followed any of the four findings.
- Action
- other
- Object
- DOJ Civil Rights Division
- ID
- 1563