Supreme Court to rule on ‘stealth’ race-based admissions in Maryland magnet school case

(The Daily Signal) – The Supreme Court will hear another case on race-based admissions after previously curbing the practice in higher education.

The high court on Monday announced it will take up the case of Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, concerning a Maryland county’s lottery admissions policy to increase racial diversity at certain magnet middle schools. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of Asian American parents, claims the lottery discriminates against Asian Americans.

The Supreme Court in 2023 rejected race-based college and university admissions policies in a case where the plaintiffs were also Asian American.

While the case is about K-12, the outcome could also affect higher education, said Erin Wilcox, senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

“After the Harvard case, universities continued to use proxies for race,” Wilcox told The Daily Signal. “We believe this was an intentional disicrmination case.”

Wilcox said the Pacific Legal Foundation has reviewed public school districts in Boston, New York City, and Alexandria, Virginia, that have used what it considers similar stealth race-based policies. So the case will have national ramifications.

“The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group,” said Chris Kieser, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the Association for Education Fairness, the parent coalition.

“A school district should not be able to defeat a discrimination claim by showing that its policy did not harm enough Asian American children,” Kieser continued in a public statement. “Every family deserves admissions rules that judge their child on their own merit.”

The lottery process includes ranking a student’s performance against that of students attending elementary schools with similar poverty levels, Reuters reported. Plaintiffs assert the process appears race-neutral but makes it more difficult for Asian American students who attend largely “high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools” to gain admission to magnet schools.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, a Barack Obama appointee, dismissed the case in 2022, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately affirmed the dismissal in February 2026.

According to Pacific Legal Foundation, the Supreme Court narrowed its review to 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.

Arguments before the Supreme Court will likely occur in 2027. Reuters reports the court is expected to hear the case and issue a decision by the end of June.

The decision could influence how public school and university systems design selective admissions policies and how litigants can challenge them.

Montgomery County Public Schools changed its magnet admissions criteria in 2016, which the plaintiffs say had the greatest impact on Asian American students. Asian American enrollment dropped, and parents formed the association and sued in 2020, according to Pacific Legal Foundation.