Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center will stop considering race or ethnicity in deciding whether to admit applicants to its school of medicine, as part of an agreement with the federal Education Department.

The president of the Health Sciences Center, one of the four universities within the Texas Tech system, signed the agreement in February, 14 years after the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights began investigating a complaint filed by an anti-affirmative action group, according to a copy of the agreement.

Roger Clegg, general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, which filed the original complaint, said on Tuesday that the agreement could pave the way for similar actions at other schools. It is the first such agreement that the Education Department under Secretary Betsy DeVos has reached with a university on the issue of race in admissions.

“It shows that the Trump administration is serious about enforcing the civil rights laws in a way that protects the rights of all Americans to be free from discrimination,” Mr. Clegg said. “The more schools that stop using racial preferences, the harder it will be for other schools to continue using racial preferences.”

Texas Tech University, the flagship school in the system, already does not use race in admissions.

The agreement, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as affirmative action programs are under renewed scrutiny in courts and by federal authorities. Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are both facing court challenges to their admissions procedures that could reach the Supreme Court. The Trump administration is investigating allegations of discrimination against Asian-American applicants at Harvard and Yale.

The Education Department under the Trump administration has made clear its position on the use of race in admissions, abandoning Obama-era policies that argued for the “compelling interests” of diversity to college campuses and encouraging race-neutral admissions methods.

Erica L. Green contributed reporting.

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