US Supreme Court to Hear Maryland Case on Race in Selective School Admissions

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about the role of race in admissions to selective Maryland middle schools. A group of parents claims local admission policy boosts Black and Latino students while constraining Asian applicants.

The Supreme Court said on Monday it would hear the parents' plea concerning four academically rigorous 'magnet' schools in Montgomery County, a suburb on the outskirts of Washington, DC, in the neighbouring state of Maryland.

The high court said it would weigh whether the parent group has enough evidence of discrimination for the case to move forward. In other words, the first question concerns the sufficiency of evidence, not a final verdict.

Lower courts previously dismissed the case because Asian-American students were not underrepresented at the specialised-curriculum schools compared with the pool of students that applied.

If the Supreme Court rules for the parent group, the Association for Education Fairness, it could revive the lawsuit.

The court is expected to hear arguments in the coming months and rule by June.

The Montgomery County school district's selection process was introduced in the 2021-2022 school year during the COVID-19 pandemic. It screens all students for academic potential, and then implements a lottery to randomly assign students from that pool to receive enriched instruction at either a magnet school or a local school.

The suit alleged that the screening process makes it harder for Asian-American students, who the challengers said are clustered in 'high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools', to enter the lottery pool.

Part of the process ranks a student's performance by comparing the student's test scores against those of other students whose family incomes are at a similar level. That comparative method sits at the centre of the dispute.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the challengers wrote: 'Under the applicant pool benchmark, the government can set specific racial targets, hit them, and avoid even an inquiry into discriminatory intent,' so long as it has not explicitly called out race in its process.

The case was thrown out in 2022 by US District Judge Paula Xinis. She noted that the percentage of admitted Asian-American students exceeded the percentage of Asian Americans among all applicants to the magnet schools. Xinis also found no evidence that the lottery policy was implemented with discriminatory intent.

The school system has consistently argued that the new admissions policy, called the 'Pandemic Plan' due to the timing of its introduction, is not discriminatory.

Both sides now await the Supreme Court hearing. The court's position on the sufficiency of the evidence will decide whether the lawsuit is revived and which way the future of the admissions policy goes.