The Trump Administration Ups The Ante After Harvard Tries To Play DEI Hardball

The Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against Harvard University on Friday, alleging the Ivy League institution has unlawfully withheld admissions data required for a federal compliance review.

The lawsuit marks a significant escalation in the government’s efforts to monitor university admissions following the Supreme Court’s 2023 landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard, which effectively ended race-conscious admissions.

The civil action, filed by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, does not formally accuse Harvard of active racial discrimination. Instead, it seeks to compel the university to produce individualized applicant data, admissions policies, and internal correspondence related to race, ethnicity, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“Harvard has failed to disclose the data we need to ensure that its admissions are free of discrimination,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will continue fighting to put merit over DEI across America.”

The dispute traces back to April 2025, when the DOJ initiated compliance reviews of Harvard’s undergraduate college, law school, and medical school. The department requested five years of applicant-level data — including test scores (SAT, ACT, MCAT, and LSAT), GPAs, extracurriculars, and essays — disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Federal officials say this level of detail is necessary to determine if the university is circumventing the Supreme Court’s mandate by using “race-neutral” proxies to achieve the same “racial balancing” the Court previously deemed unconstitutional.

According to the complaint, Harvard has “slow-walked” the process for over ten months. While the university has produced over 2,000 pages of documents, the DOJ characterizes most of these as “publicly available” materials, such as financial aid brochures and aggregated statistics. The government alleges that Harvard has repeatedly missed extended deadlines, with the last meaningful production occurring in May 2025.

“If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.

The lawsuit highlights the unique position of Harvard as the world’s wealthiest university, boasting a $56.9 billion endowment. Despite its vast private resources, the university remains subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it receives significant federal funding. In 2024 alone, Harvard received $686 million in federal research grants; the DOJ notes that the university is currently slated to receive over $2.6 billion in total federal assistance. Under federal law, recipients of such funds must allow the DOJ to examine records to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination statutes.

In the 2023 SFFA ruling, the Supreme Court found that Harvard’s previous admissions program resulted in a significant decrease in the number of Asian American applicants admitted, famously labeling the university’s use of race as a “pernicious stereotype.” The current DOJ investigation aims to verify whether those “negative factors” have truly been eliminated. Specifically, the DOJ is seeking “searchable electronic spreadsheets” that would allow investigators to compare the qualifications of admitted versus rejected students across different racial groups.

Harvard, which admits only 4.2% of undergraduate applicants and 3.2% of medical school applicants, has defended its processes in the past as holistic and compliant with the law. However, the DOJ argues that by refusing to provide individualized data, Harvard has breached a material term of its federal funding contracts.

The lawsuit seeks no monetary damages or the immediate revocation of federal funds. Rather, it asks the court to declare Harvard in violation of its contractual and statutory obligations and to order the immediate release of the requested documents.

Legal experts suggest the outcome could set a precedent for how much transparency the federal government can demand from private universities regarding their internal selection processes in the post-affirmative action era.