Harvard got sued for hiding its race data from federal investigators.
Now Dhillon has turned the same heat on William and Mary.
The DOJ just found five full law school scholarships that appear exclusively reserved by race – and the school listed every detail in public view for anyone willing to look.
Five Full Scholarships With One Condition: Wrong Race Need Not Apply
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announced Monday it has opened a compliance review of William and Mary – one of the oldest public universities in America – for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Title VI is simple: no race discrimination at schools receiving federal money.
William and Mary takes federal money.
According to the DOJ, William and Mary has been running five separate programs with explicit or de facto racial preferences baked in.
The most damning is the Lemon Legal Scholars Program at W&M Law – the DOJ says it awards at least five full scholarships covering tuition and fees that appear reserved exclusively for graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/2089438373194731871?s=20
The law school also offers the “Reaching Back Scholarship” – a need-based award with a stated preference for HBCU graduates or those who “contribute to the diversity” of the student body.
At the graduate level, the Martha L. Muguira Fellowship gives a formal preference to Hispanic or Latino women with financial need.
Dhillon called it exactly what it is.
“Awarding scholarships or offering coveted opportunities to students based on the color of their skin is illegal and offends the guarantees of our color-blind Constitution,” she said.
William and Mary Is Part of a Pattern That Runs Deep
The Supreme Court banned race-based admissions in June 2023 in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Universities heard the ruling.
They just ignored it – and shifted the discrimination from admissions to scholarships.
Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division has opened more than 100 university investigations since Trump took office.
Duke Law just received formal findings – rejected white and Asian applicants had higher LSAT scores than admitted Black applicants with similar credentials.
Yale and UC Davis medical schools received discrimination findings earlier this year.
The DOJ opened 15 new probes into medical schools in June alone.
In Virginia specifically, DOJ investigators had already gone through George Mason University and the University of Virginia before landing at William and Mary.
This isn’t a coincidence.
This is a system – and universities built it deliberately, betting no administration would ever enforce the law.
Trump is enforcing it.
Dhillon has demanded William and Mary hand over all relevant documents by September 8.
If the school doesn’t comply voluntarily, the DOJ can move to terminate federal financial assistance entirely.
William and Mary responded with the statement every caught university issues – that it is “committed to nondiscriminatory learning environments across our campus and complying with all state and federal laws.”
They’ve had three years since Students for Fair Admissions to clean this up.
The DOJ just found five programs that prove they didn’t.
What they’ve really done is insult every white and Asian student who applied to that law school and never knew they were competing in a rigged game.
Dhillon is turning university campuses upside down – and the more the DOJ looks, the more they find the same thing everywhere: elite schools that spent decades treating the law as optional when they thought no one was watching.
Someone is watching now.
Sources:
- Landon Mion, “DOJ opens probe into prestigious college over alleged discrimination favoring minority students,” Fox News, August 18, 2026.
- “DOJ Reviews William & Mary Scholarships Over Possible Race Discrimination,” The Epoch Times, August 18, 2026.
- “DOJ: Duke Law defies SCOTUS, favors blacks in admissions,” BizPac Review, August 8, 2026.
- “DOJ’s Dhillon Tests Supreme Court Precedent in Admissions Probes,” Bloomberg Law, July 17, 2026.
- “DOJ opens 15 civil rights probes into medical school admissions,” Higher Ed Dive, June 4, 2026.
- “DOJ opens civil rights review into William & Mary ‘race-based’ scholarships,” WTKR News 3, August 18, 2026.