Supreme Court Takes Up Montgomery County Magnet School Admissions Case Brought by Asian American Parents
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Maryland — The U.S. Supreme Court on October 19 agreed to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, a challenge to the admissions policies of four public magnet middle school programs in Montgomery County, Maryland, including Takoma Park Middle School and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The justices limited review to a threshold question: whether a plaintiff challenging a facially race-neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must first establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool.
The dispute traces to two rounds of change. In 2016, after a consultant's report criticized the racial makeup of the magnet programs, Montgomery County Public Schools rewrote its admissions criteria to weigh students largely against classmates at their own elementary schools. Asian American students are clustered in a handful of high-performing schools, and their enrollment in the magnet programs dropped once the new criteria took effect. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the county added a lottery to magnet admissions, which remains in place.
Also in 2020, Asian American parents formed the Association for Education Fairness and, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, sued under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In July 2022, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis dismissed the case, noting in part that Asian American students' share of admitted students still exceeded their share of the applicant pool. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal in February 2026, and the parents appealed to the Supreme Court.
"The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group," said Chris Kieser, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. "A school district should not be able to defeat a discrimination claim by showing that its policy did not harm enough Asian American children." Organizations backing the school board, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a joint statement that the admissions policies are lawful, race-neutral and evidence-backed, and give students across the county an equal opportunity to compete for magnet seats.
After the Supreme Court ended race-conscious college admissions in 2023, admissions rules at selective public K-12 programs have become the next legal battleground. The Court previously declined similar challenges involving Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Boston's exam schools; this is the first such case it has agreed to decide. A ruling is expected before the end of the current term in late June 2027. (GSM, based on the Pacific Legal Foundation release and Supreme Court docket records)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国最高法院大楼（资料图）。照片：Wikimedia Commons（CC BY-SA 3.0）。U.S. Supreme Court Building (file photo). Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
