Dive Brief:
- A federal district court judge last week tossed out another attempt by parents to challenge overhauled admissions policies at three highly sought-after K-12 public schools in Boston — called the Boston Exam Schools — that they say racially discriminate against White and Asian students.
- Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, admissions to these selective schools were based on a merit-based score that factored GPAs and an admissions exam. However, Boston Public Schools changed its admissions practices at least twice since then, temporarily removing the exam requirement during the pandemic and more recently basing admissions on tiered classifications such as English proficiency and poverty, in which exam performance is also factored in.
- The lawsuit is one of a handful of cases by parents in recent years meant to revert school admissions policies that they say use ZIP codes or socioeconomic status as proxies for race-based admissions. The lawsuits were filed following a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-conscious admissions for colleges.
Dive Insight:
During the pandemic, Boston Public Schools removed the exam requirement and instead began admitting students across each ZIP code, according to court documents. Parents then sued under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court in 2024.
But the high court's justices refused to hear the case. By the time the case got to them, Boston Public Schools had replaced its new policy with the tiered system.
"The difficulty, as I see it, is that Boston has replaced the challenged admissions policy," said Justice Neil Gorsuch in his 2024 opinion, refusing to hear the case. "The parents and students do not challenge Boston’s new policy, nor do they suggest that the city is simply biding its time, intent on reviving the old policy. Strictly speaking, those developments may not moot this case. But, to my mind, they greatly diminish the need for our review."
As a result, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold the Boston district policy stayed in place.
Pacific Legal Foundation, the organization that filed the initial lawsuit and the most recent one, dubbed Boston Parent Coalition II, said in a March 13 statement that the district's second policy change was made "in the hopes of avoiding another legal challenge."
Following the admission policies' first change to factor in ZIP codes, in fall 2021, Pacific Legal Foundation claims the percentage of the White student body dropped from 40% to 31% and the Asian American percentage decreased from 21% to 18%.
"The Tier System and Zip Code Plan — while different — possess the same factual pillars that the First Circuit rejected as insufficient to demonstrate an equal protection violation in its 2023 consideration of substantially the same issue," said Judge William Young in his March 19 order dismissing the case. Both plans, he said, "are indisputably facially race-neutral."
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Chris Kieser said in a March 19 statement to K-12 Dive that it intends to appeal.
The Supreme Court's 2023 decision in the SFFA v. Harvard case triggered a number of similar lawsuits, such as in Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools, New York state and the School District of Philadelphia.
Those cases are still ongoing.
However, in the Philadelphia case, the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals in February ruled there was sufficient evidence that district officials intended to racially discriminate when they rewrote school admissions standards in 2022, said America First Legal, the plaintiffs in the case. Those standards also factored in ZIP codes, which America First Legal said were a "thinly veiled proxy for race."
The Supreme Court in 2024 declined to hear another case out of Virginia, TJ v. Fairfax County School Board against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The 2020 admissions policies in question for that case took into account "experience factors."
The lawsuits are part of a trend in recent years in which schools are seeing an increase in complaints and lawsuits by White or male individuals who say they were discriminated against on the basis of their race or sex.
In January, for example, a conservative education advocacy nonprofit sued Los Angeles Unified School District over its integration plan that it said discriminates against “a new minority: White students.”
