The University of California, Santa Barbara, along with the head of its computer science program and admissions team, have been named as defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a student who was denied admission to the university. The lawsuit — which includes four other University of California campuses and the United States Department of Education as defendants — alleges that the applicant, Stanley Zhong, was racially discriminated against in the application process.

“We filed this lawsuit for all the Asian-American applicants, including my kids and future grandkids,” said Nan Zhong, Stanley’s father and co-plaintiff. The suit was filed in conjunction with the organization Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination (SWORD), of which Nan is the president.

The February 11 complaint — “largely written by ChatGBT and Gemini,” according to Nan — alleges that the University of California engaged in “racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian-American applicants, including Stanley and members of SWORD.” Nan is legally representing the group, as “multiple legal resources and entities … either declined to take the case or failed to respond.” 

According to the suit, Stanley was an extremely high-performing student in high school. He graduated at the top of his class with extensive coding experience, even developing an e-signing software that Amazon Web Services called “one of the most efficient and secure accounts” they had ever reviewed. At age 13, Stanley was mistakenly invited to interview for a full-time role at Google based on his résumé. When Stanley turned 18, he accepted a full-time position at the company at a level that normally requires a PhD.

Despite this, Stanley’s college admissions process did not go as planned. In 2023, he received waitlist or rejection letters from all five UC campuses he applied to: Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Davis. The only plausible reason he could be denied, Nan alleges, is racial discrimination.

However, Stanley was granted admission to UC Merced, where he did not apply, due to the UC system’s Eligibility in Local Context (ELC) program. This program guarantees admission to at least one UC campus for in-state students in the top 9 percent of their class who have completed a certain set of UC-approved courses.

Stanley was also rejected from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the University of Illinois, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and CalTech. He was only accepted into the University of Maryland and the University of Texas. 

“We are going to file lawsuits against more universities very soon,” Nan said.

The Zhongs named the U.S. Department of Education as an additional defendant in the UC suit, claiming the department did not take their initial complaints of racial discrimination seriously, nor did they investigate them properly.

The UC system was sued earlier in February by a similar group, Students Against Racial Discrimination (SARD), for similar allegations of racial discrimination. In this federal suit, SARD alleges that the UC system gives admissions preferences to Black and Latinx applicants.

“The UC undergraduate admissions application collects students’ race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only,” said a UC spokesperson. “This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admission.”

“The University of California has not been served with the filing,” as of March 6, said the spokesperson. “If served, we will vigorously defend our admission practices. We believe this to be a meritless suit that seeks to distract us from our mission to provide California students with a world-class education.”

“We are delaying serving the UC as much as possible for the AI to grow in its capabilities,” Nan told the Independent, as he may amend and strengthen the original ChatGBT-generated complaint. “It gets more powerful each week.”