Asian American group sues Yale for alleged discrimination

The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE), a nonprofit focused on Asian American equal rights in education, filed a federal civil rights complaint against Yale University on April 22, alleging the school used racial proxies to discriminate against Asian American applicants in their 2023-24 admissions cycle.

Following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) ruling, Yale’s Asian student enrollment decreased by approximately 20% from 2023 to 2024, according to the complaint. This contrasts sharply with other selective universities such as MIT and Johns Hopkins University, where Asian enrollment reportedly rose 15% and 43% during the same period. “Compelling evidence indicated that Yale University may have unlawfully employed race proxies to circumvent the Supreme Court’s SFFA rulings,” AACE President Yukong Zhao said in a statement. The complaint asks the federal government to suspend funding to Yale if the university does not comply with the law and “remove all race-based admission preferences and practices.”

AACE reportedly reviewed Yale’s published admissions policy changes, including its Sept. 7, 2023 statement that admission reviewers would “not have access to applicants’ self-identified race and/or ethnicity” or “aggregate data on the racial or ethnic composition” of applicants. Despite these claims, AACE alleges Yale employed racial proxies in its admissions process.

The coalition’s action follows its previous 2016 civil suit against Yale on behalf of more than 130 Asian American groups that later resulted in a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit in 2020. The recent complaint was encouraged by the Department of Education’s Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter, which stated that “treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

The complaint argues that Yale’s enrollment decline “strongly suggests that the institution remains committed to its DEI ideology and race-based admissions” despite the Supreme Court ruling. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is expected to investigate whether Yale’s admissions practices violate civil rights laws.

NextShark/The Rebel Yellow has reached out to Yale University for comment.