By Craig J. DeLuz | California Black Media
On June 10, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the findings of a six-month investigation into the UC Davis School of Medicine admissions practices.
The probe focused on whether the university’s “Davis Scale” violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred colleges and universities from considering race in admissions decisions.
Following that landmark decision, many institutions turned to race-neutral factors such as income, neighborhood conditions, parental education, and access to opportunity as ways to broaden student diversity. The central question in the UC Davis case is whether those factors were used as lawful measures of disadvantage or as a proxy for race to achieve outcomes the Court said could not be pursued directly.
True diversity in medicine is valuable. Different experiences and perspectives can strengthen the profession when they are earned through real preparation. But that kind of diversity must be built by better equipping underrepresented students to compete on equal footing—not by lowering standards or engineering racial outcomes through the back door.
When institutions choose shortcuts instead, everyone ultimately loses: the students, the profession, and the patients it serves. Nowhere is this clearer than at the UC Davis School of Medicine.
UC Davis has handed the Department of Justice a near-perfect exhibit of exactly how this misguided approach plays out in practice. School leaders created the “Davis Scale,” a scoring system that gives extra consideration to applicants from lower-income families, those whose parents had less education, and those who grew up in underserved areas. On paper, it sounds perfectly race-neutral.
One almost has to admire his honesty. Most prefer to whisper such things in private emails. Here, the architect publicly described their workaround, promoted it to other medical schools, and celebrated the results. Internal documents and simulations showed they tested the scale specifically to increase Black and Hispanic enrollment. They tracked racial percentages like sports scores and proudly announced that “underrepresented in medicine” students had tripled, reaching levels that neatly matched California’s demographics.
When the very people who designed the tool openly admit it was built to produce the racial outcomes the Supreme Court had just forbidden, their defense loses much of its force. Intent matters. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Students for Fair Admissions decision, “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows.”
The law looks at reality, not the clever label. When administrators publicly confess they crafted the Davis Scale as a workaround – “that’s how we skirted the issue” – they hand their critics the strongest evidence possible. As the old saying goes, once you’ve told the world how you evaded the law, it becomes much harder to claim you were following it all along.
The deeper problem is not just legal evasion; it is the quiet harm done to the very students these policies claim to uplift. Medical school is demanding. When students are admitted with noticeably weaker academic preparation—lower GPAs and MCAT scores on average—they often find themselves mismatched against classmates who arrived far better equipped. The predictable result is more academic struggle, lower performance on licensing exams, longer time to graduate, and, in too many cases, discouragement or outright failure to finish.
This “mismatch” effect is not speculation. Decades of evidence, including what happened in California after Proposition 209 banned racial preferences, show that Black and Hispanic students often succeeded at higher rates when admitted to schools where their academic preparation matched the pace of their peers. Lowering the bar does not raise people up; it simply moves the finish line and leaves many still short of real competence. It hurts the students who struggle, the patients who deserve highly skilled doctors, and the profession’s overall standards.
There is also the subtler cost of stigma. Talented students who would have earned their place on merit find their achievements clouded by doubt—both from others and, sometimes, from themselves. The soft bigotry of lowered expectations is still bigotry, and it carries a human price.
Medicine is not a demographic balancing act. Patients of every background deserve doctors chosen for knowledge and skill. Real, lasting diversity comes from preparing underrepresented students to compete successfully at the highest levels—not from lowering standards to manufacture the desired mix. UC Davis’s own documents and public statements have made the DOJ’s job easier: intent was never truly hidden. Good intentions remain no substitute for clear thinking about consequences. True progress requires raising preparation long before students reach medical school—not inventing new ways to pretend the gaps do not exist.
About the Author
Craig J. DeLuz who has over 30 years of experience in public policy and advocacy, hosts a daily news and commentary show called “The RUNDOWN”; and can be followed on X at @CraigDeLuz.