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The U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a magnet school admissions case that could change how school districts decide which students get access to advanced academic programs.
The case involves magnet school policies in Montgomery County, Maryland, a diverse, progressive school district serving the affluent suburbs of Washington, D.C., but it could affect selective admissions policies in many large, urban districts that have changed their criteria to expand access. It comes as the Trump administration and conservative legal groups have pressured states and school districts to abandon policies associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Montgomery County Public Schools changed how it admitted students to its magnet middle schools in 2017, amid concerns that enrollment did not reflect the district’s student population, and again during the pandemic, when it adopted its current system combining test scores, grades, and a lottery.
A group of mostly Asian American parents, the Association for Education Fairness, sued. They argued that school board and district leaders were motivated by concerns that Asian American students made up nearly half the enrollment in the four magnet middle school programs.
Under the new criteria, Asian American representation decreased at two magnet schools and increased at two others, according to court filings.
The parents are represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm that frequently challenges the use of racial considerations in education.
The Supreme Court had already restricted the use of race in assigning students to K-12 schools under a 2007 decision, Parents Involved v. Seattle. But in a series of lawsuits, the Pacific Legal Foundation has argued that school districts are using proxies for race, such as neighborhoods or family income, to pursue racial balancing that would otherwise be illegal.
Even after the Supreme Court restricted the use of race in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the justices twice declined to take up new K-12 cases, letting admissions policies stand in Fairfax County, Virginia, and in Boston. In each case, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s staunchest conservatives, warned that the Supreme Court was allowing unconstitutional and discriminatory practices to proliferate. Erin Wilcox, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said the court’s decision to take the Montgomery County case suggests the other justices may now be ready to consider the issue.
“Proxy discrimination is a growing issue, and a problem that is not going away,” Wilcox said. “It won’t be resolved until the court takes a look at it.”
What’s at stake, she said, is access to highly regarded schools and the educational opportunities they offer. “This could have a massive impact on the trajectory of students’ lives.”
But law professor Cara McClellan said the case could deter school districts from changing admissions policies designed to remove barriers for talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parents Involved already provides clear guidance on what school districts can and cannot do, she said, and it’s concerning that the Supreme Court wants to revisit the question.
“We’re effectively talking about whether you can take any consideration of barriers that are disproportionately impacting underrepresented groups and try to eliminate those barriers,” said McClellan, director of advocacy for the racial and civil justice clinic at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. “To suggest that is discriminatory is a really radical position.”
Before 2017, parents had to request that their children be considered for magnet school admissions, and decisions were made based on grades, scores on a cognitive ability test, and teacher recommendations. The district then tested a policy that screened all fifth graders for potential inclusion and compared scores of students at high-poverty schools with those of other students from low-income households rather than national averages.
During the pandemic, the district replaced its in-person cognitive ability test with scores from standardized tests that students had already taken. Students with good grades who scored at or above the 85th percentile at their school were entered into a lottery for spots in the magnet programs.
In their legal filing asking the Supreme Court not to take up the case, attorneys for the school district argued that the lawsuit challenged an admissions policy the district no longer uses and wrongly applied those objections to its current system.
Pacific Legal argued that the pandemic-era policy built on previous changes and disadvantaged Asian American students, who were more likely to attend low-poverty schools. Those students, the group argued, now need to score much higher than students at high-poverty schools to earn a lottery spot.
Legally, the case turns on whether parents suing a school district need to show that a policy change disproportionately affected one racial group — Asian Americans in this case — or whether evidence of racial considerations is enough to prove discrimination. Federal appeals courts have applied different standards to these cases, a split that may have motivated the Supreme Court to take the case.
Pacific Legal argues that people have individual rights to equal treatment under the law and that families should not have to show a disproportionate effect on a racial group for their lawsuits to proceed.
In an emailed statement, Montgomery County Public Schools said it would continue its commitment to “providing equitable access to rigorous opportunities for all students” while the case played out.
“At this stage, the Supreme Court is not evaluating the specific details of MCPS’s magnet programs,” spokesperson Liliana López said. “Rather, the Court will address a purely legal question and decide what plaintiffs who challenge race-neutral admissions criteria on their face must establish to demonstrate discrimination.”
Legal experts on both sides said the case could have significant implications for when and how school districts use race-neutral criteria to change who has access to advanced or selective programs.
McClellan said the split among appeals courts resulted from conservative groups pursuing a legal strategy of filing similar lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions and stretching the reasonable interpretation of the Supreme Court’s college affirmative action ruling.
The Students for Fair Admissions decision did not change the legal precedent governing K-12 schools, she said. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has frequently cited the ruling as it changes civil rights enforcement priorities and pressures states to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
The case has not yet been scheduled for oral arguments but could be heard next spring.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.