The Justice Department has launched an investigation into admissions policies at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, according to the university and a social media post by the head of the department’s Civil Rights Division that appeared to inadvertently reveal it.

“Launching a series of civil rights investigations,” Harmeet Dhillon wrote on X, posting an image of a face-down page concealing the text of an underlying page. “Another day in paradise!”

While Dhillon appeared to be attempting to hide the text of the letter, it was possible to read much of it by increasing the contrast of the image and flipping it horizontally, with key phrases like “Ohio State University College of Medicine” and “Title IV” clearly bleeding through the page.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, and it’s not clear how many other academic institutions are also under investigation.

But Ohio State University confirmed it received the letter from Dhillon and provided a full copy to NBC News, which said that Dhillon was “commencing a compliance review investigation of Ohio State University College of Medicine pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The letter asks for “all applicant-level admissions data, including applicant test scores (MCAT), GPA, extracurricular activities, essays, admission outcomes, and demographics,” and sets a deadline of April 24.

Ohio State University’s medical school is highly competitive, and just 211 new entrants were accepted into the entering class of 2025 from a pool of more than 50,000 total applicants.

The letter references the 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action policies, which the court’s conservative majority found violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Ohio State sunset its Office of Diversity and Inclusion last year, with the school’s president telling students and faculty that the university would “continue to celebrate the richness of backgrounds and ideas that makes us strong, and to uphold the time-honored value of academic freedom that has long defined the excellence of America’s universities.”

“Ohio State is fully compliant with all state and federal regulations and legal rulings regarding admissions,” Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for The Ohio State University, said in an email Wednesday, adding that the university would “respond appropriately” to the Justice Department letter.

The Civil Rights Division, which has been gutted since Trump took office last year, has moved away from many of its traditional focuses and instead leaned into conservative causes, including pushing back against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Last year, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the division to open investigations into several California universities with admissions policies that promoted racial diversity on campus.

Dhillon, a longtime conservative activist who worked on Trump’s legal team as it worked to overturn his 2020 election loss, took over the division in April 2025, and drove the investigation into a protest at a church outside of Minneapolis over a pastor’s connection to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Dhillon’s office secured an indictment of 39 individuals in connection with the incident, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Lemon pleaded not guilty, and has said that the Trump administration — which has posted social media content celebrating his arrest — was targeting him for political purposes.

Dhillon’s office recently moved to dismiss charges against a woman the government mistakenly identified as a participant in that protest.

Dhillon has said she uses social media to identify potential issues, including X, where she has over 1.3 million followers on her personal account. In December, Dhillon posted that she had been “stuck at the same level of followers on this account pretty much since I started my government job” and asked her followers, “What kind of content do my folks want to see more of to like and share?”

Dhillon has put a particular focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. “DEI delenda est,” Dhillon posted this week, which translates to “must be destroyed” in Latin.

On Thursday, she posted a New York Times story that revealed her office was also investigating two other medical schools: Stanford and the University of California, San Diego.

“We did this yesterday,” she wrote. “Among other things!”

The schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.