The U.S. Department of Justice found the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine violated federal anti-discrimination law by using admissions practices that DOJ said function as proxies for race, effectively circumventing the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions. DOJ’s conclusion follows a six-month investigation and is part of a broader wave of similar probes into medical schools. DOJ pointed to the UC Davis “Davis Scale,” which weights class-based “socioeconomic variables” and disadvantages such as parental education and whether applicants came from underserved areas, alongside metrics like GPA and MCAT. DOJ alleged UC Davis’s approach produced outcomes DOJ said track race-related selection patterns, despite the institution’s claims that it avoids race-conscious decision-making. UC Davis previously described Davis Scale as a way to capture educational opportunity without using race and has promoted diversity outcomes since the Supreme Court decision. The case could increase legal risk for medical schools nationwide still designing admissions frameworks around socioeconomic disadvantage, with heightened scrutiny of how “proxy” factors are operationalized in rankings.