The Justice Department is accusing UC Berkeley Law of intentionally discriminating against white and Asian applicants — as the school’s dean allegedly discussed ways to skirt rules barring race-based admissions.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division concluded Wednesday that the once-elite law school violated federal civil rights law when selecting its incoming classes of 2024 and 2025, even after the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision striking down race-conscious college admissions.

“The evidence shows that Berkeley Law deliberately discriminates against applicants based on race,” wrote Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, in a blistering six-page letter to the school’s attorney.

Dhillon zeroed in on Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, citing several public comments suggesting he was looking for ways to preserve racial preferences after the Supreme Court ruling.

Before the decision, Chemerinsky told The New Yorker that schools could replace the “explicit use of race” with “proxies for race,” according to the letter.

He later warned during a conference that schools should be careful about how such policies were described.

“If it’s presented with strong race neutral justifications, I think it’s much more likely to be allowed,” Chemerinsky said, according to the DOJ letter. “And I think it’s very important not to talk about it in terms of it being an attempt to circumvent the decision.”

The feds also cited a video in which Chemerinsky discussed what he called “unstated affirmative action” in faculty hiring and said he would deny making the remarks if questioned under oath.

“You can think it, you can vote it,” Chemerinsky told the audience about considering diversity when choosing faculty candidates, “but our discussions are not privileged, so don’t ever articulate that that’s what you’re doing!”

“Berkeley Law’s Dean Chemerinsky has repeatedly expressed his intention to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA,” Dhillon wrote. “He also has expressed his willingness to hide his discrimination if caught.”

Chemerinsky pushed back on the DOJ’s allegations, insisting race plays no role in the law school’s admissions decisions.

“University of California, Berkeley School of Law in its admissions decisions scrupulously complies with Proposition 209, federal statutes, and the United States Constitution. Our admissions policy is clear that race is not considered in any way in admissions decisions,” Chemerinsky said in a statement.

“Proposition 209, federal statutes, and the Supreme Court’s decisions do not preclude schools from pursuing diversity so long as they give no preferences based on race. Berkeley Law does not do so.”

The DOJ, however, said Berkeley admissions officials followed the approach described in Chemerinsky’s earlier comments.

The school’s application asked prospective students how their “perspective, experience, Voice” would contribute to diversity and specifically told them they could discuss “race/ethnicity,” according to the findings.

Berkeley’s own admissions data showed significant racial disparities, investigators said.

After accounting for LSAT scores, undergraduate GPAs and race, the DOJ found black applicants in 2025 had 5.8 times greater odds of admission than comparable white applicants. In 2024, they had 6.5 times greater odds.

Asian applicants were disadvantaged compared with black applicants to a similar degree, the department found. The median LSAT score for admitted black students was also roughly five points lower than the median for admitted white and Asian students each year from 2021 through 2025.

“The magnitude and durability of the race preferences confirmed by Berkeley Law’s applicant-level data could not reasonably have occurred by chance,” Dhillon wrote.

The university’s administration also rejected the DOJ’s conclusions, pointing to California’s nearly three-decade-old prohibition on racial preferences.

“Since its passage in 1996, UC Berkeley and its various schools and colleges, have scrupulously abided by the California constitutional amendment (also known as Proposition 209) that prohibits the university from considering race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin when it comes to admissions or employment,” university officials said in a statement.

“UC Berkeley is committed to ensuring that every student is admitted based on their merit, and not on their race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.

School officials added that they “will spare no effort to provide ample evidence showing that the university complies with all relevant laws, policies and rules governing admissions.”

The findings mark the latest federal action targeting alleged racial discrimination within the University of California system.

In May, the Justice Department alleged UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine had violated Title VI by intentionally considering race in admissions and discriminating against white and Asian applicants.

The DOJ investigation found black and Hispanic students were admitted with lower average academic credentials than their white and Asian counterparts. UCLA pushed back on the allegations, saying its admissions process was merit-based and complied with state and federal law.

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Berkeley Law also suffered a historic tumble in U.S. News & World Report’s closely watched law school rankings this year, falling three spots to No. 16 and dropping out of the vaunted “T14” group of top law schools for the first time in the rankings’ history.

The school has declined to participate in U.S. News’ rankings process since 2022, though the publication continues to rank it.

Berkeley receives significant federal funding, including more than $369 million from the Department of Education as of Sept. 3, according to Wednesday’s letter.

The Justice Department is now seeking a voluntary resolution agreement with the university to bring its admissions and oversight practices into compliance with federal law, citing the school’s refusal to comply with requests for compliance information.

“This discrimination is ongoing,” Dhillon wrote in the findings.