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Texas Medical Schools Sued For Allegedly Giving Students Of Color Preferential Treatment In Admissions Process

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America First Legal Foundation (AFL) sued six Texas medical schools Tuesday for allegedly using race and sex preferences illegally in the admissions process, according to the lawsuit.

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are allegedly discriminating against whites, Asians and males during the admissions process and admitting less qualified black, Hispanic and female students with lower grade-point averages and Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) scores, according to the lawsuit. AFL sued on behalf of a client who filed an open records request for “race, sex, grade-point average and MCAT score data for every applicant” in the 2021-2022 school year after being denied from the six medical schools.

“Racial preferences are antithetical to the American ideal, yet bureaucrats embedded throughout institutions of higher education across this country use them to engage in woke social engineering,” Gene Hamilton, vice president of AFL, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We are proud to fight for equal treatment under the law for all Americans and look forward to the day when racial preferences are forever in our nation’s past.”

The client, who scored a 511 on the MCAT, was allegedly denied entry to the medical schools while “450 lesser qualified minority students, ranging as low as a GPA of 2.82 or an MCAT of 495” were admitted, the lawsuit stated. The open records request into each of the schools allegedly showed that the median and mean of black and Hispanic students’ grade-point averages and MCAT scores was lower than those of white and Asian students in the 2021-2022 school year.

At the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the school stated that it gives “admissions preferences to black and Hispanic applicants,” the lawsuit alleged.

“Utilizing a holistic approach, the committee will seek to admit qualified underrepresented in medicine (URM) and economically disadvantaged applicants,” the school’s admissions policies and procedures said, according to the lawsuit. “Based on the ethnographic and socioeconomic makeup of the Houston-Galveston Metropolitan Area, the John Sealy School of Medicine Admissions Committee will support pipeline programs and partnerships explicitly focused on increasing Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and economically disadvantaged applicants’ matriculation to medical school.”

Stewart plans to reapply to the medical schools following the conclusion of the legal battle, the lawsuit stated.

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.