DOJ suit reveals claims of race’s role in Yale admissions
NEW HAVEN — The Department of Justice lawsuit against Yale University details the way race allegedly plays a role in determining who will be admitted.
The complaint, filed late last week, is the first time the federal government has filed a complaint of racial bias against a university over its admissions practices.
The Justice Department did support a lawsuit by a group of Asian Americans who were rejected by Harvard University, known as Students for Fair Admissions. That suit was decided in Harvard’s favor and is under appeal.
The Justice Department, which contends that Yale is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleged that not only does Yale use race as a factor at each step of the admissions process, but that the university ensures that the percentage of white, Black, Asian-American and Hispanic students will remain nearly the same from year to year.
“Yale subjects applicants to Yale College to discrimination on the ground of race,” the complaint states. “And, because Yale claims that its race discrimination is necessary to admit sufficient numbers of racially-favored applicants, mostly Black and Hispanic applicants, Yale signals that raciallyfavored applicants cannot compete against Asian and White applicants. This kind of race discrimination relies upon and reinforces damaging race-based stereotypes.”
As a recipient of taxpayer money, Yale is prohibited from discriminating based on race, according to the Civil Rights Act. Yale President Peter Salovey said, in response to the lawsuit, that the university does not discriminate but uses race as one factor in deciding whom to admit.
The lawsuit relies on academic standing — grades and standardized test scores — to show how Yale admits a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic applicants. For example, for those in the top 10 percent of the “academic index,” Yale accepted 20.2 percent of white applicants in 2017 and 2018, and 14.3 percent of Asian applicants, but 60 percent of Black applicants and 34.8 percent of Hispanic applicants.
The complaint alleges that Black applicants had seven or eight times the chances of being accepted at Yale as Asian applicants for certain ranges of academic standing, known as deciles.
“The variation in admit rates for Asian, Black, Hispanic, and
White applicants in the same Academic Index decile reflect Yale’s significant and untailored use of race, and is not the result of Yale using race as just a ‘plus factor’ in a narrowly tailored way,” the lawsuit states. “Race is the determinative factor in many admissions decisions and often determines who is accepted and who is rejected for admission.”
Yale’s class of 2024 is composed of 45 percent whites, 13 percent Blacks, 29 percent Asian Americans, 14 percent Hispanics, 2 percent Native American and 9 percent international students. Nineteen percent are first-generation college students and 8 percent are legacies, according to the university.
The complaint says Yale began using race in its admissions decisions in the 1970s. The Justice Department notified the university in August that a two-year investigation had found the university illegally discriminates against Asian and white applicants.
Salovey said at the time that Yale would not change its admissions policies and that the federal government had reached its conclusions without gathering all the data it would need.
Last Thursday, Salovey said the Justice Department had sued Yale based on “inaccurate statistics and unfounded conclusions,” including that the proportion of racial and ethnic groups had remained close to the same over the years.
“In fact, in the last two decades, the percentage of admitted applicants fluctuated significantly for all groups,” Salovey wrote. “Yale’s undergraduate admissions practices are perfectly consistent with decades of Supreme Court precedent.”