By Elura Nanos @ LawandCrime.com, Oct. 9

The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court in Connecticut against Yale University, alleging that Yale engaged in racial discrimination against “racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular most Asian and White applicants.” The complaint, which you can read in its entirety here, alleges that “Yale claims that its race discrimination is necessary to admit sufficient numbers of racially-favored applicants, mostly Black and Hispanic applicants, Yale signals that racially-favored applicants cannot compete against Asian and White applicants.”

According to the DOJ, the litigation is the result of a formal complaint it received from a coalition of over 130 Asian-American organizations, raising concerns about Yale’s discriminatory practices. In the DOJ’s pleadings to the court, it details the process by which Yale reviews and accepts applicants, and alleges that contrary to Yale’s contention that its process is “holistic,” race is a deciding factor in the school’s admissions decisions. Yale’s policies, according to the lawsuit, which are violative of federal anti-discrimination laws, constitute “institutionalized … use of racial preferences as a permanent feature of [Yale’s] admissions process and decisions.”

The lawsuit against Yale comes as no surprise, as the Trump administration accused the school of discrimination in a letter sent last August.

The nearby United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston recently heard oral arguments in a similar lawsuit against Harvard University. In that case, [....]