DOJ says Harvard is hiding racial admissions data

The Justice Department accused Harvard University of hiding its data about racial admissions and filed a lawsuit Friday demanding the school release the information to federal investigators.

The lawsuit comes three years after the Supreme Court struck down Harvard’s race-tinged admissions policy as unconstitutional.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said her department has launched a compliance probe to see whether the school has sufficiently changed its practices.

Harvard has not turned over data the department wants, she said.

“Harvard’s refusal to cooperate with the Department’s investigation violates federal law,” the lawsuit says. “As a recipient of Department funding, Harvard is required by federal regulations and its own contract with the Department to cooperate with the Department’s compliance reviews. But at every turn, Harvard has thwarted the Department’s efforts to investigate potential discrimination.”

The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, which has been an unfriendly legal battleground for President Trump.

The lawsuit does not accuse Harvard of illegal discrimination, but seeks to compel the production of the material the government has asked for.

That includes the school’s current policies, individualized applicant admission data and documents on how Harvard has tried to comply with the high court’s ruling.

In that case, the Supreme Court shut down decades of legal uncertainty about the use of race in school admissions.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court’s majority.

The court found that Harvard had used race as a “plus” factor for Black and Hispanic applicants.

Chief Justice Roberts said that categorical approach violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Washington Times has sought comment from Harvard for this story.

Harvard, while a private institution, falls under federal oversight because it takes money from the U.S. government, the lawsuit says. That includes $686 million in taxpayer-funded research grants and contracts in 2024.

Among those grants is one from the Justice Department itself, to study human trafficking. That grant binds Harvard to follow nondiscrimination policies and to comply with the government’s document requests, the department said.

DOJ asked for admissions data from Harvard College, which serves undergraduates, Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School.

The department said Harvard asked for an extension on the original deadline, then last May produced some documents, but never turned over applicant-level information.

After another series of warning letters last fall, Harvard asked for — and was granted — another short extension. Months later, DOJ said, the school still hasn’t complied. 

“Providing requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices. If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.