The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced Aug. 6 that it has concluded Duke University School of Law intentionally discriminated on the basis of race in admissions to its entering classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
The finding is the government’s conclusion, not a court ruling. Duke has not conceded it — and has not publicly disputed it. “We are reviewing the letter and its conclusions carefully,” the university said in a statement. “Duke is committed to complying with the law and will continue to do so in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission.”
At the center of the department’s findings is how Duke Law read applicants’ essays. According to the findings letter, the law school revised its mission statement to reference diversity of perspective and experience, invited applicants to address that theme through short-answer essays, and instructed application reviewers to tag responses with a “Diversity/Services” tag — along with characteristics the department says correlate with race, such as receipt of a Pell Grant. The department said administrators used stand-ins for race that included personal essays and first-generation college status.
“Using ‘diversity’ essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division.
The department said its analysis of Duke Law data showed that a Black or Hispanic applicant had a substantially higher likelihood of admission than a white or Asian applicant with the same academic credentials, and that in 2024 and 2025 the median LSAT scores of rejected white and Asian applicants exceeded those of admitted Black applicants. All of these statistical claims are the department’s own conclusions from its review of documents Duke produced; they have not been tested in court.
What a findings letter is — and what happens next
A Title VI findings letter is the end point of an agency compliance review, not a lawsuit. The department opened its review with an April notice of investigation and a request for information, followed by a supplemental request in December 2025; Duke Law’s document production forms the basis of the findings. The department says it will now seek a voluntary settlement to bring the school’s admissions practices into compliance, and that it is prepared to sue if negotiations fail.
Duke is the fifth school to receive such a letter — and the first outside a medical school. DOJ issued similar findings against the medical schools of UCLA on May 6, Yale on May 14, UC Davis on June 10 and UC San Diego on July 20. None of those schools has reached a voluntary resolution agreement; Yale is negotiating with the administration.
Settlements reached by other universities through separate processes suggest what the government may seek. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Penn and the University of Virginia have cut deals with the administration; Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Northwestern agreed to publicly disclose admissions data on race, GPA and test scores, and the Brown, Columbia and Northwestern settlements included provisions banning “personal statements, diversity narratives” in some form.
The findings arrive amid broader federal pressure on Duke. In July 2025, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened a separate investigation into how the Duke Law Journal selects its members, and the Department of Health and Human Services froze $108 million in NIH funding amid an investigation into Duke Health hiring and admissions. In June, DOJ announced 15 new investigations into medical school admissions.
As of publication, no on-record response to the findings letter from Duke Law student organizations or national civil rights organizations could be located.
Drafted by News Observed Editorial AI, human reviewed and published.