Justice Dept. Backs Key Arguments in Antitrust Suit

The U.S. Justice Department has backed essential arguments built in an antitrust fit versus 16 personal colleges and universities.

In a short filed Thursday, the department did not seek to be a part of the go well with but reported it was stating “the desire of the United States.” Exclusively, the quick is an respond to to a movement by the schools to dismiss the case.

The colleges accused of violating antitrust law protect their motion by citing the “568 Exemption” for colleges that acknowledge all their learners in a need to have-blind way. But the Justice Department claims that “an agreement in between schools that admit all learners on a have to have-blind basis and universities that do not is outside of the scope of the 568 Exemption. As a result, to the extent that at minimum some of the defendants do not confess all learners on a will need-blind foundation, the 568 Exemption would not use here.”

The targets of the go well with are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale Universities the California Institute of Know-how Dartmouth University the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering and the Universities of Chicago, Notre Dame and Pennsylvania.

All these schools say they are will need blind.

But the accommodate claims, “At the very least nine defendants for a lot of decades have favored rich applicants in the admissions process. These nine defendants have hence made admissions selections with regard to the monetary conditions of pupils and their people, thus disfavoring college students who have to have economic support.”

The nine are Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn and Vanderbilt. The accommodate charges that they “have failed to conduct their admissions techniques on a require-blind basis for the reason that all of them manufactured admissions decisions taking into account the economic situation of candidates and their households, by way of procedures and techniques that favored the wealthy.”

Columbia College is criticized since its Faculty of Typical Scientific studies, which the suit suggests enrolls 2,500 undergraduates, does not have have to have-blind admissions, in accordance to the accommodate. “The stress of supporting Columbia’s preservation of status and monetary accumulation thus falls on those who can least pay for it,” the suit claims.

The Justice Division short also cites the suit it submitted in 1989 (and gained) versus the Ivy League universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering. The Ivy League universities settled the match, when MIT fought it and shed.

Representatives of the colleges in the present-day accommodate, some of which were in the before go well with, could not be arrived at for comment this early morning.

Robert D. Gilbert, a law firm for the plaintiffs, mentioned, “We are extremely happy that the Division of Justice has submitted this statement supporting plaintiffs on the important issues in this circumstance.”