By the time Stanley Zhong graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, he had a 4.42 GPA, a 1590 SAT score, and his own e-signature software company, which he launched after noticing a market need during the COVID-19 pandemic. At 13 years old, Stanley was invited to interview at Google for a full-time software engineering position. When he was 18, Google officially extended him an offer—for a role typically reserved for candidates with PhDs or equivalent experience.
Hoping to earn a college degree before entering the workforce, Stanley applied to the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering in 2023. Despite his extraordinary accomplishments, he was rejected.
Stanley and his father, Nan Zhong, were baffled. When they began learning about the University of Washington’s admissions policy, they came to believe that the school’s race-conscious demographic targets translated into a higher bar for Asian American applicants.
In 2021, the Allen School had adopted a five-year Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access plan, with a goal of increasing the percentage of black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander undergraduates to at least 15 percent. The plan pursued that goal through a set of stated priorities, including applying equity-focused frameworks to their admissions policies. The engineering school also identified diversity, equity, and inclusion as “central” to the college’s mission of producing outstanding engineers and had a stated goal to “increase the percentage of domestic BIPOC undergraduates to the UW-Seattle average.”
Represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, Stanley and Nan Zhong are challenging the University of Washington’s admissions policy as unconstitutional. The Equal Protection Clause does not allow for racial balancing, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act reinforces that same limit for any university that accepts federal funding.
When a university builds its admissions policy around demographic targets, it tells students like Stanley that their race is more important than their individual achievements. A win in this case would make clear to universities—and the students hoping to attend them—that applicants are to be judged as individuals, not as points counted toward a percentage target.
What’s At Stake?
- Public universities cannot sort applicants by race to hit an internal diversity target—the Equal Protection Clause requires that students be judged as individuals, not as members of a racial group.
- Any university that accepts federal funding, public or private, is bound by Title VI’s promise that no one will be denied admission because of their race.
Case Timeline
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