The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Feb. 13 against Harvard University, accusing the school of withholding admissions records needed to determine whether it is complying with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-based admissions.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleges that Harvard is failing to cooperate with a federal investigation and has withheld information sought by the department as part of a civil rights review.
The department launched its review in April to examine whether Harvard’s undergraduate, law and medical schools continue to consider race in admissions after the high court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
In that ruling, the court found that Harvard had violated federal civil rights law by factoring in race for its undergraduate admissions.
According to the lawsuit, the Justice Department requested detailed, applicant-level data, including test scores, grade-point averages, essays, admissions decisions and information about race and ethnicity.
It also sought internal communications and policies related to race, diversity, equity and inclusion.
Harvard produced hundreds of pages of documents in May, most of which were publicly available materials and summary statistics. The department alleges that the university did not provide the requested individualized admissions data and failed to meet extended deadlines.
“Providing requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, stated.
“If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” she said.
The suit argues that because Harvard receives federal funding—including a grant from the Justice Department—it must comply with civil rights rules and provide access to relevant records during compliance reviews.
“The lawsuit seeks only to compel Harvard to produce documents related to any consideration of race in admissions and does not accuse Harvard of racial discrimination,” the department stated.
