Maryland parents contend that admissions rules tied to school poverty levels disadvantage Asian American students.
Three years after affirmative action was ended in higher education, the Supreme Court is poised to hear a new dispute over race in admissions, this time involving middle schools.
On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education. Initiated in 2020 by the Association for Education Fairness (AFEF), a coalition of Montgomery County parents, the case argues that Montgomery County’s process for selecting students for its magnet programs—middle school gifted tracks in science, technology, engineering, and humanities—violates the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against Asian American students. The county maintains that its method is race-neutral.
Montgomery County overhauled its selection approach in the 2021–22 school year. Reporting from The New York Times noted that officials responded to pressure from community groups, including the NAACP and CASA Inc., over the underrepresentation of Black and Latino students in magnet programs. Previously, admissions relied on test scores and grades; the revised process introduced a lottery in which top-performing students are placed into a pool and then chosen at random.
AFEF’s central complaint is that the new system ties eligibility for the pool to the poverty level of the home district. In practice, this means a student’s eligibility depends on how their scores compare with those of students attending similarly wealthy or poorer schools, rather than the broader applicant pool. The group contends that because Asian Americans tend to be concentrated in high-performing, low-poverty schools, they face a higher hurdle to qualify. They claim the new system has reduced Asian American admissions to magnet programs, a claim supported by admissions data that also show a decline in the share of Asian American applications. The AFEF also points to Montgomery County’s 2015 hiring of Metis, a national consultancy, to suggest ways to render the magnet program system more “equitable,” arguing this indicated a deliberate effort to “racially balance” admissions.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis dismissed the complaint in 2022, ruling that the parents had not demonstrated that the policy disproportionately harmed Asian American students. She noted that Asian Americans comprised a larger portion of admitted students than of the applicant pool. She drew a line between accounting for economic disparities—which she deemed permissible—and racial discrimination, writing that “alleged disparity in treatment based on socioeconomic status alone does not make plausible discrimination on account of race.” The ruling highlighted the ongoing tension in debates over diversity, equity, and inclusion, since poverty levels can act as a stand-in for race, meaning policies that are facially neutral can still have uneven racial effects.
In February, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal, stating that precedent from Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board (2023) requires parents to show that the policy disproportionately harmed Asian American applicants, something they had not done. Yet there remains a significant legal question about whether groups must prove harm at the group level rather than the individual level, and lower courts have issued mixed rulings on this point.
The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which represents the AFEF, has pursued a related case in New York City. In that instance, the city adopted an economic need index for admissions to its competitive high schools with the aim of boosting Black and Hispanic enrollment. Parents there claimed the rule discriminated against Asian American students. In 2024, the Second Circuit held that if the city intended to discriminate, the plaintiffs need not prove harm to Asian Americans as a group; harm to a single individual could be enough to proceed. The case was remanded to the district court to determine the city’s intent to discriminate, and it remains unresolved.
The Supreme Court now faces the question of whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must show an aggregate disparate impact on the targeted race relative to its representation in the applicant pool, according to SCOTUSblog.
In a Monday statement, PLF Senior Attorney Chris Kieser argued, “The Constitution protects individuals, not groups, and 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.”
