Duke Law School illegally considered race in admissions, DOJ says

Two years after the Supreme Court told every university in the country that race-based admissions violate the Constitution, Duke Law apparently decided that ruling was more of a suggestion. That's the plain reading of what the DOJ says its Title VI review found. This isn't a case of ambiguous language in some old policy nobody bothered to update. It's a law school, of all places, allegedly continuing to sort applicants by race after the highest court in the land drew a bright line against exactly that.

There's a particular irony in a law school being the one accused of ignoring binding precedent. These are the people training the next generation of lawyers and judges, presumably on the idea that rulings from the Supreme Court matter. If the DOJ's findings hold up, Duke wasn't confused about Students for Fair Admissions. It just assumed enforcement would be slow, spotty, or politically inconvenient enough that nobody would check the receipts.

That assumption looks a lot shakier now. The Trump administration has made these compliance reviews a real tool rather than a talking point, and Duke is only the latest name on a growing list of schools getting a knock on the door. Whatever you think of the broader culture war around diversity offices and admissions rhetoric, this specific complaint is narrower and harder to wave away: either the law prohibits considering race in admissions decisions or it doesn't. The Court said it does. A university can disagree with that outcome, lobby against it, write op-eds about it. What it can't do is keep operating as though the ruling never happened.

If Duke wants to argue the DOJ got the facts wrong, that's a conversation for the courts. But "we didn't think anyone would check" is not a defense, and elite institutions shouldn't get a different rulebook just because they're used to writing their own.