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A group of parents claims local admissions policies boost black and Latino students while restricting Asian applicants.
Published on October 20, 2026
The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about the role of race in admissions at selective Maryland middle schools after a group of parents claimed that the policy against Asian students discriminated in favor of black and Latino students.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the parents’ plea to four academically rigorous “magnet” schools in Montgomery County, a suburb on the outskirts of Washington, DC, in the neighboring state of Maryland.
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The Supreme Court said it would consider whether the parent group had enough evidence of discrimination to move the case forward.
Lower courts previously dismissed the case because Asian-American students were not underrepresented in the specialized curriculum schools compared to the pool of students who applied.
If the Supreme Court rules for the parent group, the Association for Education Fairness, it can revive the process.
The court is expected to hear arguments in the coming months and rule by June.
‘The Pandemic Plan’
The Montgomery County school district’s selection process was instituted in the 2021-2022 school year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It screens each student 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 more difficult 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 to those of other students whose family incomes are at a similar level.
“Under the benchmark of the applicant pool, the government can set specific racial targets, beat them, and even avoid an investigation of discriminatory intent,” as long as it did not explicitly invoke race in its process, they wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.
Previously thrown out
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 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, dubbed the “Pandemic Plan” because of the timing of its release, is race-neutral.
“The pandemic plan is a color-blind lottery,” the lawyers wrote in a brief asking the Supreme Court not to take up the case. “Nothing about the pandemic plan, its history or its purpose is offensive to the Constitution.”
Supreme Court justices will now consider whether a group that claims to be targeted by a race-neutral policy must show that it is disproportionately harmed to prove intentional discrimination.
