Asian American high school students may have a chance to prove that New York City’s major admissions process discriminated against them after a federal appeals court reinstated their lawsuit.
The case is one of several over-selective admissions cases at the K-12 level following a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that drastically curtailed consideration of race in college admissions.
The lawsuit involves the Discovery Program, a middle school pathway for admission to the city’s nine highly selective high schools, including nationally renowned schools such as Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School.
Although most students enter through entrance exams, the Discovery Program has existed since the late 1960s to give opportunities to promising disadvantaged students, and until 2018, the Discovery Program offered free or reduced-price lunch options. Categories included recipients, students receiving city financial aid, and students in foster care. Both children and English learners.
In 2018, then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and then-Schools Superintendent Richard A. Carranza announced policy changes aimed at increasing the enrollment of Black and Latino students in selective high schools. Mr. de Blasio called the lack of representation a “grave injustice.”
The city overhauled its Discovery program and began requiring selective high schools to reserve 20 percent of their admissions seats for disadvantaged students. And the rules now require that individual applicants not only be disadvantaged, but also come from disadvantaged secondary schools, defined by a measure of economic hardship in the community the school serves. Changed.
In the city and school system’s modeling, the number of selective admissions slots offered to black and Latino students would increase from 9 percent to 16 percent in the first year, and the proportion of Asian American students would necessarily increase. predicted to decrease.
A coalition of Asian American advocacy groups and parents of Asian American students argued that the change was motivated by discriminatory intent and would have a discriminatory effect, calling the amendment to the Constitution. The suit was filed under the Equal Protection Clause of Article 14.
As it turned out, more middle schools than expected met the unfavorable criteria, and the expected decline in Asian American enrollment in selective high schools did not materialize, at least not in the first year.
But some Asian American applicants were denied admission, and 11 majority Asian American middle schools were excluded from the Discovery program because they exceeded unfavorable metrics, the lawsuit alleges. I am doing it.
A federal district judge granted the city’s request for summary judgment, finding there was no disparate impact on Asian American students. The district court said that common law requires that all discriminatory effects be proven comprehensively.
Appeals court opens opportunity to prove ‘discriminatory intent’
In the September 24 decision in Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School PTO v. De Blasio, a three-judge panel of New York City’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled to reinstate the case.
The appeals court held that changes to the city’s admissions program were adopted with discriminatory intent because the district court split discovery and based its decision solely on the lack of racially discriminatory impact. He said that it is necessary to assume that
The court then ruled that while only some Asian American students suffered the negative effects of the new policy, it gave the plaintiffs a chance to prove officials’ discriminatory intent and held the new policy under so-called strict scrutiny at the highest level of the Constitution. He stated that it is sufficient to make it subject to the following. Some believe that race-specific policies are unlikely to survive.
“When a government enacts a law or policy that has proven discriminatory motives against a particular race, … a valid equal protection claim exists because an individual is adversely affected by a discriminatory law or policy on the basis of race. “It can be done on the basis of a showing that members of that racial class have been harmed as a whole,” wrote Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the Sixth Circuit. I wrote to the panel.
He cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University President and Fellows, a higher education admissions decision.
The harm of missed opportunities based on race is true even when racial motives are hidden behind facially neutral laws and policies, and when similar discriminatory motives have been proven. Bianco said, quoting a Harvard University opinion that reads: What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. ”
Plaintiffs in the New York City lawsuit argue that “Asian Americans who have been discriminatoryly impacted by the new policy, including Asian American students at certain middle schools who were excluded entirely from the Discovery Program based on the new criteria,” “We have uncovered evidence from students.” Bianco said.
He believes that if individual Asian American applicants are barred from the Discovery program after changes are made based on suspicions of discriminatory intent, enough Asian American students will be admitted to selective high schools across the city. He said that it is not a problem to allow and prevent the percentage from dropping.
The New York City lawsuit is supported by the Pacific Law Foundation, which is also involved in at least two other high-profile cases challenging selective admissions programs in K-12 education.
In February, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Virginia’s Fairfax County School District’s selective high school admissions program. A federal appeals court upheld changes to a program that was ostensibly race-neutral but adopted to boost underrepresented minorities. The program was challenged on behalf of Asian American students, whose numbers have declined. The lower court said there was no effect of unlawful racial discrimination.
Meanwhile, in the Boston case, an appeal is pending before the Supreme Court in which Asian American student advocacy groups are challenging the school system’s competitive admissions changes to “probability schools.”
