US sues Yale over discrimination against Asian-American and white applicants
- Lawsuit says race is ‘determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year’
- Justice Department earlier said Asian-American and white students one-tenth to one-fourth as likely to be admitted as comparable African-American students
The Justice Department sued Yale University on Thursday, weeks after prosecutors found the university was illegally discriminating against Asian-American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, alleges Yale “discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year”.
It comes about two months after the Justice Department publicly accused Yale of discrimination, saying its investigation found that Asian-American and white students have “only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials”.
Yale had denied the allegations, calling them “meritless” and “hasty”.
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The action from the Justice Department is the latest by the Trump administration in a long-running effort aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges.