San Francisco’s elite medical school is the latest higher learning institution to come into the Department of Justice's crosshairs — and millions in federal funds could be at risk.
Page A2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 22 September 2026
Justice Department finds a second California university discriminated against white, Asian applicants, 13 days after the first.
As it ran on the front
The Justice Department's civil rights division found, in a letter dated September 9, that UC Berkeley's law school discriminated against white and Asian applicants, favoring Black applicants in violation of federal law. That's the finding. That's the whole story, and if you want to make it about politics you're the one keeping score, not us. Federal funding follows federal law; when a school fails to follow the law, funding follows that too, in the other direction. The Assistant Attorney General wrote to Berkeley's counsel and laid out the case: essays as workaround, race sorted into outcomes, a dean who — well, according to the letter, discussed ways to skirt rules barring race-based admissions. That's not an accusation. That's a finding. A dean discussing how to get around a rule against something is, I'll grant you, a strange thing for a finding to hinge on, since it means the finding is partly about what someone said they'd consider doing, which — no. It's a finding. Moving on.
Thirteen days later, the same division sent a letter making the identical allegation against a different school: UC San Francisco's medical school discriminated against white and Asian applicants. Same funding exposure. Same office. Different building. The Department wants you to know this is not a pattern, it's diligence — a civil rights division doing what civil rights divisions do, which is find civil rights violations, in sequence, at elite California institutions, thirteen days apart, using language close enough to the first letter that I'd have to go check whether anyone changed the school's name at the top. I'm not going to check. I don't need to check. It's fine.…
…(cont) Two schools, two findings, same month, the same claim stated twice against two of the University of California's most competitive programs — and if that strikes you as a coincidence of enforcement rather than a strategy of enforcement, congratulations, you're the target audience. I was going to say the second letter stands on its own evidentiary record. I don't actually know that. I haven't seen it. I'm told it does. I'm telling you it does.
The funding is real. The findings are real. What's underneath them is the part the department isn't in a hurry to show you, and neither, it turns out, am I.
“Same office, same accusation, two UC campuses, thirteen days apart — you don't move that fast without a template already sitting in the drawer. The funding threat isn't about a formula, it's about who they've picked this month to make an example of. Today it's Berkeley and UCSF; the money on the line trains your kid's doctor and your kid's lawyer, and the list isn't finished.”
“This is even-handed enforcement, plain and simple — the Department looked at two schools independently and reached the identical conclusion, which is either a testament to consistent methodology or, I'll grant, a hell of a coincidence for two separate investigations to close thirteen days apart. It's methodology. I meant methodology. The law's the law, and if it lands on Berkeley's law school and UCSF's medical school back to back, maybe stop running the same admissions playbook.”
The receipts
· Trump administration alleges UC Berkeley law school favors Black applicants from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Trump administration accuses prestigious law school of favoring Black applicants over White, Asian peers from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· UC Berkeley Law intentionally discriminated against white, Asian applicants: Feds from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· UC Berkeley Law discriminated in admissions, Trump administration finds from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.