The Department of Justice, under President Donald Trump, is investigating Harvard University's affirmative action policies and has threatened to sue the school if they do not comply with the probe. 

During the last year of the Obama administration, a complaint was filed alleging the Ivy League's affirmative action policies discriminated against Asian-American applicants. However, the Trump administration has sent a letter notifying the school that they will have until Dec. 1 to hand over documents on its admission policies, reported Reuters.

The Justice Department's probe is based on Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to the letter. 

“The Department is left with no choice but to conclude that Harvard is out of compliance with its Title VI access obligations,” the letter reads. “Title VI does not allow entities under investigation to dictate what information qualifies as relevant.”

However, the school has maintained that their admissions process complies with all US laws and their 2017 freshmen class had a population that was over 50 percent women, nearly 15 percent African-American and more than one in five students were Asian.

“As we have repeatedly made clear to the Department of Justice, the university will certainly comply with its obligations under Title VI,” Harvard spokeswoman Anna Cowenhoven said in a statement on Tuesday. “We have an obligation to protect the confidentiality of student and applicant files and other highly sensitive records, and we have been seeking to engage the Department of Justice in the best means of doing so.”