The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a family must prove group-wide statistical harm before a court will ask why a school district changed its admissions rules. The case, Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, involves the competitive magnet middle school programs in Maryland’s largest school district.
Montgomery County Public Schools long admitted students based on grades, a cognitive abilities test, and teacher recommendations. After a consulting study flagged racial disparities in enrollment, the district rewrote its criteria, first through a field test and then through a lottery. A group of parents alleges the district did so to reduce the number of Asian American students admitted.
Lower courts ended the case without reaching that allegation. Their reasoning was that the group’s share of admitted students did not fall below its share of applicants.
The Court will now consider whether a plaintiff “challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool.” In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court held that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.
First & Fourteenth will continue to monitor the case and share updates as it progresses.
