Ending Discrimination in K-12 Education
Education is often the key for students to unlock their potential, but discriminatory policies are denying students the chance for a quality education.
Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools.
Racially discriminatory policies are insidious and just the latest iteration of the long-rejected idea that race and sex ought to determine opportunity in America. All men are created equal, and every person is guaranteed equal protection of the laws.
As Chief Justice John Roberts rightly said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Pacific Legal Foundation fights to ensure that students aren’t denied a quality education because of their race or sex.
Of Note
Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence v. School Committee
Parents fight discrimination-by-proxy at Boston’s elite public schools
Boston Public Schools (BPS) operates three prestigious “exam schools” for students in grades 7-12. Admission to these schools was traditionally decided on a merit-based “composite score” comprised of grade point average (GPA) and an admissions exam. Students were admitted according to score rankings until each school was full. But Boston Public Schools ultimately replaced the established citywide admissions process with a ZIP Code quota in order to change the racial makeup of the student bodies at exam schools. The Boston Parent Coalition sued. When the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, a similar PLF case, Justice Samuel Alito cited this case in his strong dissent.
“All men are created equal” is the American ideal that promises the government will treat each individual equally.
- After decades of slavery and a Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all Americans “equal protection of the laws.” But the Supreme Court took another 75 years to recognize that “separate is inherently unequal,” and even after that, schoolhouse doors were blockaded for students of the wrong color. It took civil rights laws, the federal courts, and untold thousands of freedom fighters to end the reign of the segregationists.
- Today, however, public schools are reintroducing race-based policies designed to admit or deny students’ educational opportunities based on their race. Often undertaken in the name of diversity or equity, school districts are designing admissions policies to reach the right “balance” of races in school.
PLF has successfully defeated discriminatory K-12 policies across the country.
- World-class magnet schools in Hartford, Connecticut, are no longer turning away black and Hispanic students and leaving seats empty to fill racial quotas for white students.
- Middle schools and high schools can no longer prevent male dancers from joining school dance teams because competitive dance is deemed a “girls sport.”
But schools across the country are implementing discriminatory policies.
- School districts are fighting hard to inject racial discrimination back into school admissions decisions and school operations.
- Universities are cutting men’s athletics programs in a misguided effort to “equalize” participation between men and women. Individual student athletes are paying the price.
Cases
May 9, 2024 | By ALISON SOMIN
The Dispatch: How competitive high schools get away with race-based admissions
Boston’s school board did not try to disguise its racial motivations.
February 26, 2024
My son was rejected from Thomas Jefferson High School. The Supreme Court should have heard our case
I struggled to create a teachable moment out of my eldest son’s rejection from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
February 21, 2024 | By JOHN SWEENEY
Supreme Court won’t review admissions at Va.’s Thomas Jefferson school
The Supreme Court will not review a challenge to the admissions system for a prestigious Northern Virginia magnet school, ending a years-long legal battle in the case and signaling a majority of justi…
February 20, 2024
Supreme Court Won’t Hear New Case on Race and School Admissions
The decision, along with an order this month declining to block West Point’s admissions program, suggests that most justices are not eager to immediately explore the limits of its ruling from June.
February 20, 2023
Supreme Court allows 'race neutral' Virginia high school admissions policy that bolsters diversity
The Supreme Court on Tuesday avoided another contentious debate over race and education by turning away a challenge to an admissions policy aimed at encouraging diversity at a Virginia high school.
September 26, 2024 | By GLENN ROPER
Victory in NYC lawsuit on Specialized High School admissions
After nearly six years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a major victory for New York City parents in the case of CACAGNY v. Adams. The court ruled the plaintiffs, represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, have successfully shown discriminatory effects of a school admissions policy started by former …
August 14, 2024 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
This landmark Supreme Court case affirmed that free speech is for all ages
When siblings Mary Beth and John Tinker were just 13 and 15 years old, they found themselves at the center of a major Supreme Court case. The Court’s 1969 ruling would later be remembered as a groundbreaking decision that affirmed the First Amendment rights of students, regardless of age. Mary Beth, John, and their four …
July 19, 2024 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
Ideological bias stripped one first-grader of her First Amendment rights
Does free speech have age restrictions? The Supreme Court says no. But one California judge ignored the Court’s landmark decisions and upheld a public school’s decision to punish a first-grader over a picture she drew in class. The student’s mother is now fighting back to protect her daughter’s right to free speech. An innocent drawing …
May 17, 2024 | By ANASTASIA BODEN
70 years after Brown v. Board, a resurgence of race-conscious admissions policies in schools
Ask most people to name five Supreme Court decisions, and Brown v. Board of Education will make their list. Its pronouncement that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” is so widely known and so well-respected that people of many ideological backgrounds quote it and try to claim its mantle, even when they have vastly different …
March 06, 2024 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
A mother’s fight to end discrimination and protect merit-based public education
A student’s race should not determine their access to public educational programs. The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause specifically safeguards against this kind of discrimination. Yet, this is exactly what is happening in New York State’s Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP). Originally intended to help students prepare for college, t …
February 22, 2024 | By CHRIS KIESER
Supreme Court should wipe Thomas Jefferson High School ruling ‘off the books,’ Justice Alito says in dissent
We received heartbreaking news this week when the Supreme Court denied our petition for a writ of certiorari in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. The case challenged the school board’s overhaul of admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology—one of the best public high schools in America—undertaken to limi …
February 22, 2024 | By STEVEN D. ANDERSON
SCOTUS will not hear PLF case on discrimination in K-12. What happens now?
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will not hear our Thomas Jefferson High School case, a fight to determine whether public school students should be treated as individuals—on merit—or as members of racial groups. This is disappointing news for Pacific Legal Foundation and our clients, the Coalition for TJ: a group of …
September 13, 2023 | By ERIN WILCOX
Can colleges still use race in admissions?
It’s a brave new world out there for college admissions officers. Gone are the days when they could use racial stereotypes as a stand-in for an applicant’s personal qualities or deduct points for being Asian American. When the Supreme Court finally put an end to these racist and unconstitutional admissions practices in June, it left …
October 28, 2022 | By ERIN WILCOX
Education officials spread poisonous myth that Asian students are ‘test-taking robots'
Envy: a feeling of resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck “I walked into Stuyvesant High school and I thought I was in Chinatown,” Milady Baez, then-deputy chancellor of the Department of Education in New York City, complained to colleagues at a 2018 meeting. Baez’ point was clear: There were, in her …
April 21, 2022 | By GLENN ROPER
TJ alum calls admissions changes ‘a war on excellence’ in Washington Post
My colleagues and I have written many times about our Thomas Jefferson High School admissions case, but nothing we could write better captures what’s at stake in the case than what Coalition for TJ member Hung Cao just wrote in The Washington Post. Cao is a TJ alum. A Vietnamese refugee who later became a …