Racial Quota Goal At UC Irvine Engineering School Challenged by Equal Protection Project
Incriminating website section taken down after we filed a joint complaint with the Departments of Education and Justice.
Our Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org) has challenged over 550 discriminatory programs and scholarships at over 120 colleges and universities. We have not before encountered a situation where a school set explicit racial quota goals, until now.
On October 30, 2025, we filed a Civil Rights Complaint at the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education against against the University of California, Irvine (“UCI”), and its Samueli School of Engineering (“SSoE”)(collectively, UCI/SSoE”), for adopting and promoting an unlawful racial minimum quota goal tied to statewide demographic targets. Since UC Irvine already was under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly using racial quotas in employment and admissions, we also filed jointly at the Civil Rights Division of DOJ.
From the Complaint:
SSoE has publicly announced on its website that it is setting a minimum racial quota goal that seeks to increase the percentage of Black faculty, students, staff, researchers, and partners to “match or exceed the state’s current Black population of 6%.”3 SSoE explains that it “aim[s] to reflect California’s demographics in our [community] by growing our population of Black faculty, students, staff, researchers, and partners to match or exceed the state’s current Black population of 6%.” (Emphasis added)
The racial quota initiative is part of a larger UCI/SSoE effort. SSoE further states that it is “committed to taking action to dismantle anti-Blackness and institutional systemic racism” and “pledge[s] to confront anti-Blackness to build a thriving culture for Black people and people of all backgrounds
As we always do, we also explained why we believed the conduct was unlawful. In this case, that was pretty simple:
The racial quota initiative violates Title VI, by discriminating on the basis of race, skin color, or national origin through minimum racial quota targets.4 Furthermore, because UCI is a public university, such racial quota initiative also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment….
The Supreme Court has consistently struck down the use of racial quotas and race-based classifications by public institutions. In Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 315 (1978), the Court held that a university’s use of a racial quota for class admission was unconstitutional, emphasizing that race cannot be used to insulate individuals from comparison with all other candidates for admission. Similarly, in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989), the Court explained that “[a]n amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota.” And in Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 585 (2009), the Court clarified that, under Title VII, an employer must have a “strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability to justify race-conscious, discriminatory action.” (Id.) (holding that mere fear of litigation or generalized claims of inequity are insufficient to justify intentional discrimination). These precedents reaffirm that government entities—including public universities—may not employ racial quotas or classifications absent an extraordinary and precisely defined justification grounded in concrete evidence.
If the racial quotas are intended to achieve racial balance, such an objective has been “repeatedly condemned as illegitimate” and “patently unconstitutional” by the Supreme Court. Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 726, 730 (2007) (“Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that at the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual, or national class”) (cleaned up, citation omitted).
After the Complaint was filed and UC Irvine presumably had been contacted by media (see below), the page containing the racial quota goals was taken down, but already had been archived. Here is the before (yellow highlighting added) and after:
The story was covered by Fox News digital:
Civil rights group accuses UC Irvine engineering school of unlawful race-based quotas
“These racial minimum quota goals are particularly troubling since UC Irvine already is under investigation by the Department of Justice for use of racial quotas in employment and admissions,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital in a statement.
A section of UCI’s Samueli School of Engineering website, which now appears to be offline, read, “We acknowledge the existence of anti-Black racism and prioritizes the campus commitment to create a university culture where Black people thrive. We aim to reflect California’s demographics in our SSoE community by growing our population of Black faculty, students, staff, researchers, and partners to match or exceed the state’s current Black population of 6%.” [image omitted]
The statement appears to set a race-based benchmark for recruitment and hiring, which the EPP argues constitutes a racial quota prohibited under federal law….
The group is asking the federal government to investigate.
“The Departments of Education and Justice should examine practices throughout UC Irvine and its Samueli School of Engineering,” Jacobson said. Where the institution sets racial minimum quota goals, it is likely there are discriminatory policies and practices throughout the institution. Such systemic discrimination must be addressed by federal authorities, since university officials seem not to care.”
In a statement, a UC Irvine spokesperson said the university “strives to create a learning and working environment where students and employees from all backgrounds are welcome to pursue their academic and professional goals.”
The school added it is reviewing the complaint.
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Comments
UC Irvine: We’re progressive. We have Racial Quotas in our Engineering School.
Paula: That’s just checking a box. That’s illegal.
UC Irvine: We were able to get around that. We use circles on our form.
Paula: Well, I’ll be. That is progressive.
Just more, brazenly illegal and unconstitutional “progressive”/”liberal”/Dhimmi-crat racism, cast as allegedly laudable empowerment of blacks.
Thank you to Professor Jacobson and the EPP team, for their unwavering efforts in defense of equal treatment and opportunity for all, under our laws.
dont worry…african engineering is as competent as the germans
I went to UCSB and studied Mech Engineering in the 80’s. I studied my ass off to get there. No one held a spot for me.
Want to get into an Engineering program? Earn it. Else I’ll be avoiding any bridges or planes you had a hand in building.
Problem is the same idiots who allow these quotas also demand they get better grades and lower the standards of the program itself. You want to play thoe games, go back to Studies.
“It’s a pity the bridge collapsed, killing over a hundred people, but it’s racist to think that the DEI designer who couldn’t read, write, or calculate somehow designed a faulty bridge because he wasn’t qualified.”
I was an adjunct teacher at UC Irvine from 1998-2016. At that time, and I believe now, the student population was just over 50% Asian-American. That is due partially due to the importance Asian-American families place on their children’s education, their own academic excellence, and also the fact that UCI has a smaller humanities department as opposed to hard sciences, where many Asian-American students at UCI are studying.
It is true that the black student population has been low, but that is not due to “anti-blackness”, and can only be superficially cured by finding more black students or teachers, regardless of their qualifications for entry.
With all due respect to the history of discrimination, the real reasons that black students are underrepresented have more to do with the circumstances of their growing years, and the failure of secondary education to educate them well in the face of those circumstances in the black communities and the black families. As Larry Elder often says, the biggest problem facing black America today is not racism, rather it is the high % of black kids born out of wedlock and the lack of a two-parent household. Solve those problems, and we will see dramatic problems all around without resorting to racial quotas.
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