A joint investigation by the Justice Department and the Education Department concluded that UC Berkeley's School of Law discriminated against white and Asian applicants in its 2024 and 2025 admissions cycles.
DOJ's Civil Rights Division and the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights found that Berkeley Law used a diversity essay prompt — asking applicants how they would contribute to "diversity in our classrooms and community" — along with a form asking applicants to name their "primary identity" as backdoor ways to collect and weigh race in admissions. Officials reported that in 2025, Black applicants had 5.8 times greater odds of admission than white applicants with comparable qualifications; in 2024, that gap was 6.5 times.
The finding letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, cited a video of Dean Erwin Chemerinsky telling his own class not to openly say a candidate should be preferred for "diversity" — evidence DOJ says shows the school knew the practice was legally risky. Chemerinsky pushed back publicly, saying the school "scrupulously complies" with federal law, the Constitution, and California's Proposition 209, and that its policy "is clear that race is not considered in any way in admissions decisions." DOJ is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement with Berkeley and says it will sue if the university doesn't agree to change its practices.
Berkeley is only the second law school DOJ has targeted, after Duke last month, but the enforcement pattern is now unmistakable: pull the admit-rate gap by race, controlling for LSAT and GPA, and see if it's implausibly large. Any T14 law school running a similar diversity-essay-plus-identity-form setup should assume its own numbers are already being pulled.
The Chemerinsky video is the more interesting escalation. DOJ isn't just auditing outcomes anymore — it's using a school's own internal communications, including what faculty tell students in class, as evidence of intent. That raises the stakes for how schools talk about their process internally, not just how they describe it publicly.
None of this changes what you control as an applicant. It just tells you which parts of your file matter most right now.
A prompt asking how you'd contribute to a school's diversity isn't going away, but generic language about your background is exactly what's under scrutiny as a race proxy. Answer it the way you'd answer any other essay: with a specific project, argument, or experience you can back up, not a category you belong to.
Skip any "primary identity" or optional demographic form unless it's clearly required — and if a school offers one, don't assume checking it helps you. Let your LSAT, GPA, and writing carry the weight instead.
Duke, then Berkeley, in successive months — and DOJ has already run this same playbook through four medical schools. There's no reason to think it stops at two law schools, especially among peers with similarly worded diversity essays.
Build your list on schools' actual admitted-student numbers rather than their public diversity statements, which are increasingly likely to be renegotiated mid-cycle. A strong LSAT and GPA are the one part of your application that stays stable no matter how this settles.
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