Out of 1,128 students enrolled at UC Berkeley School of Law last October, exactly 51 were black. The school evidently decided that number wasn't high enough — and that the Supreme Court's opinion on the matter was more of a suggestion.
The DOJ just showed up with receipts.
A joint investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education, announced September 9, found that Berkeley Law deliberately discriminated against white and Asian applicants during its 2024 and 2025 admissions cycles. In 2025, a black applicant had 5.8 times the odds of admission compared to a white applicant with equivalent credentials. Not slightly better odds. Not a marginal thumb on the scale. Nearly six to one.
The LSAT numbers are worse. Fifty percent of admitted black applicants scored below the 95th percentile of admitted white applicants. Thirty-seven percent scored below the 99th percentile. The Trump administration found that the university made systematic efforts to circumvent the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the decision that was supposed to end race-based admissions in higher education.
So how did Berkeley pull it off? Essay prompts. The school required applicants to explain how they would contribute to "diversity in our classrooms and community." It asked students to identify their "primary identity" and then grouped admitted students by race in classrooms. The investigation found the school tracked racial identities internally throughout the process — building a race-sorting machine and calling it holistic review.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon didn't sugarcoat it. "Berkeley Law School's deliberate efforts to circumvent the Supreme Court's decision in SFFA demonstrate a complete disregard for the rule of law," she said.
Kimberly Richey, the Department of Education's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, put it even more plainly: "Title VI is clear: no student should be advantaged or disadvantaged in admissions because of the color of their skin."
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky fired back that the law school's admissions policy "strictly prohibits considering race in any way." Which is a fascinating defense when the federal government just produced statistical evidence showing black applicants were admitted at six times the rate of equally qualified white ones. The policy says one thing. The numbers say another. The numbers don't lie.
This isn't even Berkeley's first time at the rodeo. Back in September 1992, the Office for Civil Rights found the school was running ethnic waitlists and racial sorting practices. That investigation resulted in a settlement requiring policy revisions. Thirty-four years later, same school, same scheme, new essay prompts.
The Trump administration has been on a tear. In August 2026 alone, DOJ hit Duke and George Washington University with similar investigations. The Department of Treasury and IRS proposed pulling tax-exempt status from universities that violate civil rights law on September 3. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race — and the administration is treating that prohibition like it actually means something.
Berkeley built the modern framework for cancel culture, speech codes, and ideological conformity on campus. They wrote the playbook on telling everyone else what words they can use and which thoughts are acceptable.
Turns out following a Supreme Court ruling was the one rule they couldn't manage.