UCLA Medical School Just Hit with Federal Class Action Lawsuit for Discriminating Against Whites, Asians

The University of California, Los Angeles’ David Geffen School of Medicine was just hit with a federal class action lawsuit for discriminating against whites and Asians in admissions in favor of blacks and other minorities.  The entrenched racial preferences apparently continued even after the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action by educational institutions in 2023.

Talk about systemic racism!

The lawsuit claims that the admissions office regularly admitted blacks with below average GPAs and standardized test scores while “requiring whites and Asians to have near perfect scores in order to be considered.”

It cites whistleblower claims that the standard for  minorities is “as low as you could possibly imagine” and that the admissions committee  “completely disregards grades and achievements” for those applicants

The case was filed last week in the United States District Court for the Central District of California by Do No Harm, which fights wokeness in medicine, as well as Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-racial preferences group, and Kelly Mahoney, a white woman who was denied admission to the school allegedly because of its racial preference policies.

“If she were black, Mahoney would have had a far better chance of getting admitted to UCLA. Mahoney finds it hurtful and offensive that UCLA would judge her based on irrelevant racial factors that she cannot control,” the complaint alleges.

It says the school is violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act that forbids discrimination by federally funded schools as well as the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction to bar UCLA from “engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process.”

The complaint focuses on the machinations of medical school admissions director Jennifer Lucero, who  seems to have single handedly turned the admissions process into a racial spoils system after she assumed the post in 2020.

It says that, “In defiance of state and federal law, UCLA uses race as a factor in admissions. Both the UC System and Geffen have publicly expressed their intent to racially   balance the class. Geffen’s dean of admissions, Lucero, both publicly and privately said she uses race as a factor in making admission decisions. And whistleblowers confirm that the admissions committee, either led or intimidated by Lucero, use all available methods to glean an applicant’s race, openly discuss applicants’ race, and use race to hold students to different standards based on race“

She sounds quite belligerent and prone to berating anybody who questions the qualifications of minorities.  “Lucero regularly bullies and berates members of the Admissions Committee who voice concerns about admitting below-average black applicants by labeling them as “privileged” and implying that they are racist.”

The complaint cites information from whistleblowers about the racial high jinx that were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last year.

“Whistleblowers with first-hand knowledge of Lucero’s admissions practices have now come forward. They report that, under the guise of ‘holistic’ review, Geffen requires applicants to submit responses that are intended to allow the Committee to glean the applicant’s race, which the medical school later confirms via interviews. Lucero and her handpicked committee members routinely and openly discuss race (and racial proxies) and use race as a factor to make admission decisions. Lucero berates and belittles committee members who raise concerns about admitting minority students because of their race despite low GPAs and MCAT scores. At UCLA Medical School, race is not only a factor but often decisive—above GPA and MCAT scores—in making admission decisions.”

The end result of this has been the weeding out of whites and Asians.  The complaint says that the  “numbers show that UCLA is engaged in intentional racial balancing. Between 2020 and 2023, the percentage of white and Asian applicants to Geffen was consistently around 73% of the total applicant pool. Yet the percentage of matriculants to Geffen who are white and Asian plummeted: 65.7% in 2020, 57.1% in 2021, 57.8% in 2022, and 53.7% in 2023.”

Moreover, “UCLA’s illegal racial discrimination has harmed and is continuing to harm applicants, including Plaintiffs and their members. In this race based system, all applicants are deprived of their right to equal treatment.”

Do No Harm founder Stanley Goldfarb told the California Globe that the discrimination in the lawsuit is quite entrenched. “I believe it has been going on for quite a while,” he said in a telephone interview. “There are people who believe this is a proper thing to do. They believe in reparations” and have the attitude that “there was discrimination for many years and now we need to discriminate. “

He added that the other rationale for the racial preferences is that blacks supposedly do better with black doctors.  But “there is no evidence that is correct.”

“We are hoping to stop this. We want medical schools to pick the best and the brightest. Period. We don’t want it racialized. I don’t think anybody wants a doctor they find out wasn’t there because they deserved to be in medical school.”

The UCLA medical school communications office did not respond to a request for comment.