Supreme Court Takes Up Maryland Magnet School Admissions Case: Asian American Parents Challenge "Neutral" System as Discriminatory
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case over admissions to Montgomery County, Maryland's magnet middle schools, in a challenge brought by Asian American parents.
The court granted the petition on October 19, limited to the question of whether a plaintiff challenging a facially 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 case was brought by the Association for Education Fairness (AFEF), an organization formed by parents who argue that the admissions rules adopted by Montgomery County Public Schools in 2016 intentionally disadvantage Asian American students: the system compares applicants against students at their own elementary schools, so Asian American students clustered at a handful of high-performing schools face far steeper competition.
The parents sued in 2020. The Fourth Circuit earlier upheld dismissal of the case, holding that the parents had to show the policy had pushed Asian American enrollment below that group's share of the applicant pool — the so-called "aggregate benchmark" approach, which the Second and Third Circuits have rejected.
Chris Kieser, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the association for free, said: "The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group. A school district should not be able to defeat a discrimination claim by showing that its policy did not harm enough Asian American children.
Every family deserves admissions rules that judge their child on their own merit." The Supreme Court's ruling will set a national standard for how intent-based discrimination claims against school admissions policies are judged.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国联邦最高法院大楼。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons / Photo: The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. Source: Wikimedia Commons
