The American First Legal Foundation’s Center for Legal Equality filed a class-action lawsuit on Jan. 10, claiming unfair admissions practices against six Texas medical schools and their top faculty, including Dell Medical School and UT President Jay Hartzell, on behalf of a white male plaintiff.

The legal organization that filed the suit is led by Stephen Miller, who served as senior adviser to former President Donald Trump during his presidency. The plaintiff George Stewart claims the six Texas medical schools, as well as “nearly every medical school and university in the United States,” illegally consider race and gender in their admissions policy, according to the lawsuit. 

The suit further claims the practice widely known as “affirmative action” violates Title VI and Title IX — federal anti-discrimination laws — and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits state universities from sex or race discrimination. 

The six schools Stewart sued are the University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, according to the lawsuit.

Stewart graduated from UT-Austin with a 3.96 GPA in biology, scored a 511 of 528 on his MCAT and held medical-related jobs and internships, according to the lawsuit. After his rejections, Stewart filed and obtained an open-records request “which revealed the race, sex, grade-point average, and MCAT score of every applicant in the 2021-2022 cycle,” according to the lawsuit. 

“The data demonstrates that each of the defendant medical schools is providing admissions preferences to female, Black, and Hispanic applicants while unlawfully discriminating against whites, Asians and men in admissions decisions,” the lawsuit alleges.

Stewart’s lawsuit comes just months after UT-Austin professor Richard Lowery filed a class-action lawsuit against Texas A&M University that claimed the University’s Accountability, Climate, Equity and Scholarship Faculty Fellows program, known as ACES Plus, and its admission policy discriminated against white and Asian applicants. 

Lowery, also represented by American First Legal, declined to comment on either lawsuit. Spokespeople for both UT and the UT System also declined to comment on the recent lawsuit. 

Stewart’s lawsuit states that he intends and is “able and ready” to reapply to the medical schools, but he hopes the court will prohibit the affirmative action policies that prevent him “from competing on equal terms with other applicants.”