WASHINGTON – Three years after the Supreme Court ended the use of race-conscious admissions at universities, the court will decide when parents can challenge the admission policies of prestigious middle and high schools.
The dispute is over whether parents can sue if Asian Americans are still getting in more often than other students − even if fewer are being admitted after the admissions criteria changed.
The parents who filed the appeal the court on Oct. 19 agreed to hear argued that the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment applies to individuals, not groups.
“Racial balancing is racial discrimination,” their attorneys wrote.
Lawyers for the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland said charges of discrimination require showing
that race is the only explanation for an outcome – and there’s no evidence of that in this case.
“Here, where the challenged policy is not keyed to race, was adopted because of a global pandemic, and relies on a random lottery for ultimate selection, it is not plausible to consider Asian Americans systematically excluded from the magnet schools,” the district’s lawyers wrote in a filing.
The Supreme Court previously declined to hear similar challenges to admission policies at competitive schools in Bostonand Fairfax County, Virginia.
After the court, in 2023, ended the use of race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, middle and high schools became the next battleground.
In Montgomery County – a large school district just outside Washington, D.C. – students can apply to four magnet middle schools.
When the 2020 COVID pandemic made in-person testing difficult, the county moved to a lottery system for admissions that it continues to use.
The factors that determine whether a student can enter the lottery include how the student performed on standardized tests compared with others from elementary schools with similar poverty levels.
Because Asian-American students are clustered in low-poverty elementary schools, it’s harder for them to quality for the lottery, the parents challenging the policy argue.
After the change, Asian Americans made up a smaller share of incoming classes at two of the magnet schools. But the proportion of Asian Americans admitted to the other two magnet schools increased, according to school officials.
Lower courts dismissed the parents’ challenge to the policy.
The case is expected to be argued next year with a decision issued by the end of June.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court to hear race-based challenge to magnet school admissions
