In America’s most competitive public schools a student’s race is becoming a liability again. From Boston to Fairfax County to New York City, school officials are overhauling admissions to engineer preferred racial percentages. Their target? Asian American and white students, who they condemn as “overrepresented” based on their share of the population.
These officials insist they aren’t discriminating. They claim to use “race-neutral” criteria like zip codes and lotteries. But the intent—and often, the effect—is to reduce Asian American and white enrollment to make room for other groups. This is an end-run around the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. It’s racial discrimination by proxy.
Two federal appeals courts have now blessed this ruse, as long as Asian American and white admissions don’t fall too far. If the school maintains some rough racial proportionality, the discrimination is excused—no matter how much harder Asian American and white students must work to gain a seat, and no matter how blatant the animus of officials seeking to knock them down a peg.
The Supreme Court may soon weigh in through the case of Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence v. School Committee of City of Boston.
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Background
Boston’s elite “Exam Schools,” one of which produced five signers of the Declaration of Independence, are at the center of a heated controversy over racial gerrymandering of admissions. For the 2021-22 school year, the Boston School Committee scrapped the Exam Schools’ entrance test in favor of a zip code quota expressly aimed at slashing the number of Asian American and white students admitted. School Committee members’ shockingly racist texts and comments revealed their discriminatory agenda to use geography as a thinly veiled proxy for race.
The zip code quota worked as intended. The percentage of Asian American and white students receiving admission offers to the Exam Schools plummeted, while black and Hispanic admissions increased. But the First Circuit deemed this stark racial reallocation legal, because Asian American and white students still earned seats at a rate higher than their share of the applicant pool under the new regime.
Unwilling to stomach this injustice, a group of Asian American and white parents and students joined together as the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence. The Coalition sued the School Committee in federal court, asserting that the zip code quota’s deliberate reduction of Asian American and white admissions violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Although a federal district court found that several School Committee members “harbored racial animus” and chose the zip code quota “precisely because of [its] effect on racial demographics,” it nevertheless upheld the plan. In a puzzling decision, the court ruled that the Committee’s express intent to reduce Asian American and white enrollment wasn’t enough to prove discrimination – there had to be an even more drastic disparity. The First Circuit affirmed, effectively blessing racial balancing as long as “overrepresented” races still achieved some minimum admission level. This alarming holding turned equal protection on its head.
As a result, Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is supporting the Boston Parent Coalition’s fight with an amicus brief because we are committed to America’s core values of impartiality, freedom, and limited government. Racial discrimination, whether obvious or sneaky, goes against these principles. By supporting the Boston Parent Coalition, we’re fighting for every student’s right to be appreciated as an individual, not just a racial category. It’s unfair for any child to suffer because their race is perceived as “too common” in a school. Using zip codes to decide who gets in, based on race, is a step back to old, unjust ways. As our country gets more diverse, it’s vital to treat everyone equally, regardless of origins.
MSLF urges the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stop this injustice, overturn the First Circuit’s decision, and clearly say that schools can’t balance races in admissions, no matter how they try to do it. Discrimination, whether hidden in geography or based on skin color, doesn’t belong in our country of equality under the law. The Court needs to stick to what it promised in Brown v. Board of Education: that a student’s race won’t decide their education. Only by saying no to racial gerrymandering can we protect all students from being treated discriminatorily.
What’s At Stake?
The Boston Parent Coalition case presents the Supreme Court with a pivotal opportunity to arrest the metastasizing trend of public schools using “race-neutral” proxies like zip codes and lotteries to racially balance admissions and exclude “overrepresented” Asian American and white students. If the Court declines to act, the consequences could be catastrophic. More school officials will follow Boston’s lead, redistributing admissions offers based on crude racial headcounts rather than individual merit. The 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection will wither into merely a guarantee of token “representation” for each race.
The insidious notion that racial discrimination is permissible if disguised by facially neutral criteria is gaining alarming currency in the lower courts. This case is the perfect vehicle for the Supreme Court to slam the brakes on this disturbing trend. By taking up Boston Parent Coalition, the Court can emphatically reaffirm that our Constitution is colorblind and does not tolerate end-runs around its equality mandate. No public school should be permitted to deliberately reduce a racial group’s admissions to pursue proportional representation, no matter how creatively it cloaks its racial gerrymandering.
For far too long, Asian American and white students have found themselves in the crosshairs of educators seeking to engineer racial “balance” in America’s elite public schools. From Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to Lowell High School to Boston Latin School, they’ve been punished for their academic success, told that they take up too many seats. It’s time for the Supreme Court to send an unequivocal message that this pernicious practice will no longer be tolerated under any guise.
The stakes could not be higher. If school districts can use “race-neutral” criteria to deliberately slash admissions for “overrepresented” minorities with impunity, no group is safe from the racial balancing axe. The 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection for all will become a dead letter. That’s why the Supreme Court must grant certiorari in Boston Parent Coalition – to vindicate each student’s right to be treated as an individual, not just a component of a racial group. In America, your race should never limit your dreams. But that founding ideal is in jeopardy if the Court stays its hand.
Case Timeline
- Fall 2019: Boston Public Schools (BPS) establishes a committee to review potential changes to Exam School admissions.
- July 2020: The Boston School Committee forms the Exam School Admissions Criteria Working Group to recommend revisions.
- October 8, 2020: The Working Group presents its zip code quota plan to the School Committee. Modeling shows the plan would reduce Asian American and white enrollment.
- October 21, 2020: The School Committee approves the zip code quota. During the meeting, Committee members mock Asian-American parents and express anti-white animus in text messages.
- February 2021: The Boston Parent Coalition sues the School Committee in federal court.
- April 2021: The district court rules against the Coalition.
- October 2021: Following public disclosure of the racist texts, the district court withdraws its initial ruling but still decides for the School Committee.
- February 2022: The District Court issues a final ruling denying relief from the prior judgment.
- December 2023: The First Circuit affirms the district court.
- April 2024: The Coalition petitions the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari.
Supreme Court Update
We are disappointed that on December 9, 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. As Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas note in their dissents from denial, the idea of racially gerrymandering school attendance is fundamentally repugnant to the 14th Amendment’s promise of Equal Protection.