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Federal lawsuit: UCLA’s med school used race in rejecting highly qualified Asian and white students over less-qualified applicants

June 4, 2025

A federal lawsuit alleges that UCLA has used race as a basis for admitting less-qualified applicants into its prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine, a process that deprived more qualified Asian and white applicants of their right to equal treatment and denied them “the opportunity to pursue their lifelong dream of becoming a doctor because of utterly arbitrary criteria.”

The lawsuit was brought by Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit whose similar lawsuit against Harvard led to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action; Do No Harm, a national association of medical professionals that describes itself as “combating the attack on our healthcare system from woke activists”; and Kelly Mahoney, a student rejected by the UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine.

It names as defendants a who’s-who of state officials – including Governor Gavin Newsom and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond – as well as UCLA administrators, including Jennifer Lucero, the medical school’s associate dean of admissions.

Citing alleged violations of state and federal law, the plaintiffs ask the court “to stop the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and various UCLA officials from engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process.”

Admission to the school is highly competitive. Some 14,000 people apply annually for about 100 openings at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. It notes that, from 2020-2023, “the percentage of white and Asian applicants to Geffen was consistently around 73 percent of the total applicant pool. Yet the percentage of matriculants to Geffen who are white and Asian plummeted: 66 percent in 2020, 57 percent in 2021, 58 percent in 2022, and 54 percent in 2023.”

At the same time, the Geffen School’s reputation sagged. In 2020, U.S. News and World Report ranked it the nation’s sixth best medical school. Three years later, the school fell to No. 18.

That period began, the complaint alleges, with the school’s decision in 2020 to promote Jennifer Lucero to associate dean of admissions.

“Lucero is an outspoken advocate for using race to make admission and hiring decisions in medical schools and hospitals,” the complaint says. As dean of admissions, she “wields significant influence over Geffen’s admissions policies and practices, the appointment of the admissions committee members, the committee’s deliberations, and admission decisions.”

“On one occasion,” the complaint claims, “when the [admissions] committee was deliberating on a black applicant with a significantly below-average GPA and MCAT score, Lucero stated: ‘Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everyone else? We need people like this in the medical school.’”

“Committee members report that the bar for underrepresented minorities is ‘as low as you could possibly imagine’ and that the committee ‘completely disregards grades and achievements’ for those applicants.”

“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 reads.

Though the complaint doesn’t name him, applicant Geoffrey Tong (not his real name) told Southern California News Group that the allegations make sense to him. Though he clocked top grades as an undergrad and top-tier MCAT scores, Tong figured he had a chance at getting in – if not in the first round, then surely in the second. He was wrong.

“What really surprised me – or maybe, I guess, shocked me – was that they didn’t even give me a second look,” he said. “They just sent me a kind of routine rejection letter. I was kind of embarrassed, if that makes any sense.”In its Nov. 1 letter to Tong, UCLA’s Geffen School explained that “the large number of highly qualified applications received made the section process a difficult one. It is with regret that I must inform you that we will not be taking further action on your application.”

The brief note was signed “Jennifer Lucero, Associate Dean of Admissions.”

Rejected by every University of California medical school to which he applied, Tong was accepted by several others outside California. This fall, he’ll attend medical school 3000 miles from the California home where he was raised by parents who are themselves the children of Asian immigrants.

Tong says he’s “uncomfortable to even think” about race and admissions, never mind to talk about it. He says he knew nothing about Lucero or the controversy at UCLA until after he was rejected. Then he went online and discovered “several other students” had found themselves in the same strange situation – highly successful, well-rounded students mysteriously unacceptable to the Geffen School.

Many of those applicants directed one another to revelations in reporting last year by Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon. Relying on UCLA documents and interviews, Sibarium cited the experience of a Geffen School professor who said one of the school’s students “could not identify a major artery when asked, [and] then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don’t know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.”

“I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” the professor said. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

Tong admits that he’s “a glass is half-full kind of guy.” So, given the scandal at UCLA, he considers himself “lucky.”

“I’m not sure I would have been comfortable at the Geffen School,” he says. “I was pretty upset at first – felt like I’d let down my family and failed somehow. But we’re all pretty happy now that I won’t have to go through all that.”

Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center and cohost with David Bahnsen of National Review’s Radio Free California podcast.

Orange County Register

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Federal lawsuit: UCLA’s med school used race in rejecting highly qualified Asian and white students over less-qualified applicants

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