UCLA medical school faces federal lawsuit alleging race-based admissions
UC Los Angeles medical school is being sued over alleged use of race as a factor in admissions, despite state law and Supreme Court rulings banning affirmative action, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The lawsuit was on Thursday in California’s Central District federal court. It was brought by activist group Do No Harm, which “fights affirmative action in medicine;” a nonprofit against Harvard University’s affirmative action program called Students for Fair Admissions and Kelly Mahoney, a college graduate who was “rejected from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.”
According to the lawsuit, the legal action was taken to prevent medical school and UCLA officials from “engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process.”
The lawsuit alleges that Associate Dean for Admissions Jennifer Lucero requires applicants to submit responses that “allow the Committee to glean the applicant’s race” and that Lucero and the admissions committee members discussed race “routinely and openly,” along with using it as a factor for admission decisions.
The lawsuit also states that Do No Harm has at least one member who was rejected from Geffen and “is able and ready to reapply if a court orders Defendants to stop discriminating and to undo the effects of its past discrimination.”
Over 1,000 students sign petition demanding UC Berkeley rehire lecturer and offer canceled class
Almost 1,300 people signed a petition calling for the rehiring of UC Berkeley lecturer Justin Yokota and the reopening of the class CS 168, “Introduction to the Internet,” for the fall 2025 semester, according to the Daily Bruin.
Yokota, who was a lecturer in the electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) department, learned he would not be reappointed on April 23. Yokota said his department told him his contract was not being renewed since an Academic Senate faculty member was taking his position.
UC Berkeley’s campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said the cancellation of the class is “unrelated to questions about individual lecturers.”
Approximately 30 EECS students delivered the petition, which was over 65 feet long, to EECS Chair Claire Tomlin, according to students. Yokota said the department’s overall success is more important to him than his own.
“I don’t want people to be angry for my sake,” Yokota said, according to the Daily Californian. “I do feel like the department will survive, I’m not absolutely critical to the department. And, for me personally, I will survive myself. At the very least, the years that I’ve been here have improved my personal skill set, so I think they were well worth it. And all things are temporary in the end, right?”
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the May 15, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
