The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division (DOJ) has sued Harvard, accusing the Ivy League school of withholding race-related admissions documents.
The DOJ stressed that the lawsuit “does not accuse of racial discrimination.”
“The Justice Department will not allow universities to flout our nation’s federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide the information required for our review,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “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.”
In July 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard and UNC’s race-based admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA).
The DOJ launched a probe into Harvard and Harvard Law Review in May 2025 after allegations came out that both discriminate based on race.
The DOJ claimed Harvard hasn’t turned over documents in 10 months:
Over ten months ago, the Department sought documents necessary to evaluate Harvard’s compliance with Title VI, including applicant level admissions data. Harvard has not provided this information. Harvard’s refusal to cooperate with the Department’s investigation violates federal law. 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. It has slow-walked the pace of production and refused to provide pertinent documents relating to applicant-level admissions decisions. Harvard made its most recent production of admissions-related documents in May 2025. The repeatedly extended deadlines for document production have long passed.
The DOJ told the court that the documents will help the department “assess whether Harvard is complying with federal law” or defying Title VI and SFFA.
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