Medical Schools Are Still Discriminating by Race

Now I know what they were hiding. Earlier this year, the state legislature fired me as a board member of Old Dominion University for asking questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The head of the board and the university president refused to let me meet with the dean of the medical school, who separately told me that his school allows different test scores for different groups of admitted students. I strongly suspected the medical school continued to practice the racial discrimination that the Supreme Court prohibited in 2023, but I was fired before I could discover the truth.

I was right. Old Dominion University is discriminating by race.

After my dismissal, my organization filed state Freedom of Information Act requests with the university. We sought admissions data for the medical school, which is named Eastern Virginia Medical School, including MCAT scores sorted by race for all applicants and admitted students. In 2024, in the first class of students admitted after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admission vs. Harvard, the school made no meaningful attempt to stop discriminating.

The MCAT scores prove it. Overall, accepted black students had average scores in the 77th percentile, while Hispanics were in the 83rd percentile. The average white student had to score in the 88th percentile, while Asians had to clear 90 percent. In fact, the average MCAT score of Asian students who weren’t admitted is higher than the average score of accepted black students -- an unmistakable sign of discrimination. It’s also a threat to patients. Studies show -- and my experience as an Ivy League medical educator affirms -- that MCAT scores predict student performance and the likelihood of succeeding in the difficult field of medical practice.

The evidence is equally clear in medical school’s acceptance rates. Despite having worse credentials on average, black applicants had the best chance of being offered a coveted slot: Almost 11 percent were accepted. That’s more than twice as high as the rate of acceptance for white applicants -- and over four times higher than the 2.5 percent acceptance rate for Asian applicants. Overall, the worse a racial group did on its academic qualifications, the better chance its members had to be accepted. Only racial discrimination can account for this blatantly unequal treatment.

Crucially, neither the MCAT scores nor acceptance rates for each group meaningfully changed between 2023 and 2024. The average MCAT score of black and Hispanic students admitted in 2023 was within one point of the score of those admitted in 2024. In other words, the school effectively acted like the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action instead of ruling it unconstitutional.

It's possible that Old Dominion is using a loophole known as “holistic” admissions. While that approach is supposed to look at the entire applicant, instead of just grades, scores, and other indicators of merit, it can easily be used to cherry-pick factors that favor candidates of certain races. The medical school could also be looking at factors that could indicate race -- including last name, zip code, and income level -- without ever explicitly focusing on skin color. These are well-known workarounds that other schools use.

Which points to a bigger problem: Old Dominion isn’t alone. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has promised to help medical schools “adapt” to the end of affirmative action “without compromising” goals like diversity. At the AAMC’s annual meeting last year, medical school administrators and legal counsels discussed the tricks they’re using to keep race-conscious admissions. The AAMC has also issued nationwide data showing disparities in medical school admissions similar to what I’ve found at Old Dominion. Clearly, medical schools have every intention of continuing to discriminate by race.

They must be stopped. At the very least, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and President Donald Trump should direct their administrations to investigate and penalize schools like Old Dominion for violating the Constitution and civil rights laws. But long-term, the federal courts need to start enforcing the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling school by school, closing loopholes one after another.

After the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of public schools in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the courts had to step in repeatedly to ensure desegregation. Now, they need to stop schools from violating the Students for Fair Admission decision and continuing to discriminate by race in admissions. Last week, my organization filed a lawsuit against UCLA that will hopefully begin this necessary process.

Universities know exactly what they’re doing. That’s why I was fired from Old Dominion’s board -- because I was close to the truth. I suspect the Democratic-controlled state legislature did the administration’s bidding because they didn’t want me to find out. Now it’s undeniable that the university’s medical school is discriminating by race. The next step is to end this illegal and immoral practice. Since the supposed adults in the room won’t do it, the authorities must.