UNC Chapel Hill will stop using racial data in admissions under a deal that closes 18 Education Department investigations and a Justice Department compliance review.
The Justice Department and the Education Department announced a settlement with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday, October 19. In return, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights will close 18 active investigations, and DOJ will end an 18-month compliance review opened in April 2025.
On admissions, UNC agreed to stop using or analyzing racial data and to adopt what DOJ calls a "color-blind admissions system." Personal adversity and family background, such as poverty, can still be considered if applied consistently and not as a proxy for race.
The deal also requires race-blind scholarships, financial aid and programming. UNC may not partner with "bridge" or "pipeline" programs that consider any protected characteristic. DOJ's announcement adds mandatory antisemitism training and a new "Merit & Civil Rights Administrator," to be hired within 30 days.
The agreement runs through December 31, 2028. UNC pays nothing and admits no wrongdoing.
This is a different kind of case from Duke Law and Berkeley Law. Those were findings of discrimination. UNC is a negotiated deal, and it gives the administration a template to point other universities toward. DOJ's Harmeet Dhillon has said she hopes other institutions take note.
UNC was one of the two defendants in the 2023 Supreme Court case that ended race-conscious admissions, so its admissions office has long been under a microscope. Most of what changes here is paperwork and monitoring, not the day-to-day application.
The settlement explicitly allows consideration of adversity and family background. If poverty, a family responsibility or a hard circumstance shaped you, say so with concrete detail.
Write about what you did and what you learned, not a category you belong to. That is what survives scrutiny, and it is what reads best anyway.
Schools now have a clear example of how to close federal investigations. Expect more settlements and more cautious wording on applications and scholarship pages.
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