The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, a case challenging a race-neutral lottery and admissions process used at four public middle schools that could have implications for admissions processes at all levels of education. The lawsuit seeks to build upon the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, a pair of cases that struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
At issue is the admissions policy of four public magnet middle schools in Montgomery County, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C. The magnet schools are specialized schools that focus on science, technology, engineering and math. The Association for Education Fairness sued the Montgomery County Board of Education, alleging that revisions to the admissions process made in 2021 were designed to reduce the number of Asian American students in the magnet schools to open more spots for underrepresented” groups including Black and Hispanic students.
After a 2015 study found that the percentage of Black and Hispanic students in the middle school magnet programs was much less than the percentage in the total student population, the school system made numerous changes to its admissions processes. After the COVID-19 epidemic, the school system again changed the selection process for the magnet schools to a random lottery system for all students who meet the eligibility criteria. After this process was implemented, the percentage of Black and Hispanic students admitted to the middle schools increased.
After the Association for Education Fairness sued, the school board filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was granted by a federal district court in 2022. The judge noted that the school’s admission policy utilizing a lottery process is a racially neutral process, and the plaintiffs had failed to prove that the policy was motivated by discriminatory intent or had a racially discriminatory impact. The judge also wrote that she could not see how the admissions policy “visited a disproportionate burden on Asian American students when the percentage of admitted Asian American students so substantially outpaces the percentage representation among all applicants.”
The Association for Education Fairness appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the previous ruling. The group then asked the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the courts of appeals are divided on this issue. In addition to the ruling from the Fourth Circuit, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has also ruled that plaintiffs must show that admissions policies reduce a group’s representation in the student pool below the group’s representation in the applicant pool. However, in the Second and Third Circuits, plaintiffs have been able to prove intentional discrimination without proving the effect on the applicant pools.
In the order released by the Supreme Court on October 19, 2026, the court agreed to hear the case, limited to the specific question of “whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool”. While this specific case is focused on magnet middle school admissions, the Supreme Court’s decision could affect challenges other admissions policies including high school and college admissions. The Supreme Court has not set a date to hear arguments in this case, but it will be heard this term and a decision is expected in June or July 2027.