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Supreme Court takes up Maryland middle school admissions case, testing the reach of its 2023 affirmative action ruling

The justices agreed Monday to hear a challenge to Montgomery County's lottery-based magnet school policy, asking how much evidence Asian American families need to bring a racial discrimination claim. The answer could reshape K-12 admissions from coast to coast.

Supreme Court takes up Maryland middle school admissions fight

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to the lottery-based admissions policy at four selective magnet middle schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, a case that could decide how difficult it is for families to sue a public school district for racial discrimination when the policy does not mention race on its face.

The court's order, issued in its October 19 orders list, grants certiorari in Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, docket No. 26-12. The group of Asian American parents behind the suit had argued that the county's magnet middle school admissions rules cut their children's enrollment. Two courts below them disagreed. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis threw out the case in 2022, finding the policy did not place a disproportionate burden on Asian American students, and the Richmond-based Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal, agreeing the lawsuit "does not plausibly allege that the challenged policy disparately impacts Asian American students."

The question the justices will now consider: 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. That is a procedural question, not a direct ruling on whether the county's policy is constitutional. But the practical stakes are large.

A ruling for the parents would reopen the courthouse door to challenges that lower courts have been dismissing early, without a fuller look at what school boards intended.

What the Montgomery County policy does

The disputed policy puts selected students into an admissions lottery for the magnet schools. The parents fault the school district for using "local norming" to determine which students reach the academic threshold to qualify for the lottery, arguing Asian American students get penalized because they disproportionately attend high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools.

Montgomery County adopted the lottery policy for the 2021-22 school year, saying the pandemic made the previous system impossible. The parents sued to challenge the entrance policies for the county's magnet schools, which provide enrichment programs in math and science, or the humanities, for high-achieving students in sixth through eighth grades. They include Takoma Park Middle School in Silver Spring and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Germantown.

The challengers argue that the policy unfairly elevates Black and Latino students for admission in violation of the 14th Amendment. Montgomery County has denied that. The district previously waived its right to respond to the cert petition before later filing a brief in opposition, according to the Supreme Court docket.

The circuit split driving the case

The case did not land at the Supreme Court on facts alone. The Association for Education Fairness wants the justices to provide a nationwide resolution for what evidence a plaintiff must show to invalidate a racially neutral policy as discriminatory, arguing that "the governing constitutional standard now depends on geography" and that "evidence sufficient to establish an Equal Protection claim in some circuits is legally irrelevant in others."

The Second and Third Circuits have rejected the aggregate benchmark approach that the Fourth Circuit used to dismiss the Maryland case. That split is what finally moved the high court to act, after the justices declined similar petitions in 2024 involving comparable policies in Virginia and Massachusetts.

The parent coalition is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal group that has pursued similar challenges in Virginia and Massachusetts. The Supreme Court rejected those cases in 2024. Chris Kieser, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, said Monday: "The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group."

Three years after Harvard and UNC

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case about the role race plays in middle school admissions three years after a majority on the high court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. That 2023 ruling, which invalidated race-conscious programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, left open questions over what lengths school districts may still take to promote diversity.

This case is narrower, asking the justices to decide a more technical question of what evidence challengers need to bring such a claim, so the court is not poised to issue a ruling on the constitutional issue itself. Still, the answer to that procedural question will determine how easy it is for parents nationwide to get their discrimination claims heard at all.

The legal challenge coincides with President Donald Trump's policies, implemented since he returned to office last year, against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in education, as well as in the U.S. government and military, and in private companies. The Justice Department has not formally weighed in on the case as of Monday.

Under its normal scheduling practices, the court will hear arguments next year and rule by the end of June.

Also Monday: Trump signs women's health executive order

Separately, President Trump held a Rose Garden ceremony Monday to sign an executive order titled "Advancing Women's Health to Improve Outcomes in All Phases of Life." The order creates a women's health division within the National Institutes of Health and a White House Women's Health Task Force.

The task force will be led by Trump's White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who recently announced that she is cancer-free, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The new Women's Health Division at NIH will not replace the agency's existing Office of Research on Women's Health but will have a broader mandate beyond research.

Trump credited the first lady with conceiving the idea for a women's health division within NIH. First Lady Melania Trump laid out five pillars of women's health innovation, including research funding directed at finding cures for medical issues that disproportionately affect women and the use of artificial intelligence to speed up medical discoveries. The executive order calls for targeting maternal health, mental health, and endometriosis, and also mentions other health concerns including Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, heart disease, and stroke.

The order revokes Executive Order 14120, signed by President Biden on March 18, 2024, which had advanced women's health research and innovation. The task force was set to hold its first meeting late Monday afternoon.

What to Watch

  • Briefing schedule in AFEF v. Montgomery County: The Supreme Court has not yet set oral argument dates. Arguments are expected early next year, with a decision by the end of June. Watch for the Justice Department to signal whether it will file an amicus brief backing the parents, which would be consistent with the administration's broader anti-DEI posture.
  • The evidentiary standard question: The court has specifically asked parties to brief whether plaintiffs "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." How the justices frame their answer will determine the floor of evidence required in all federal circuits going forward.
  • K-12 exposure beyond Maryland: Plaintiffs in new legal challenges across the country claim that admissions to prestigious public programs, though race-neutral on the surface, use proxies such as socioeconomic status to achieve the same result in pursuit of diversity. A ruling that lowers the pleading bar could trigger a wave of new lawsuits at magnet and selective-enrollment schools in cities including Chicago, New York, and Boston.
  • NIH women's health structure: Congress has not appropriated dedicated funds for the new NIH division. Watch for appropriators on the House and Senate Labor-HHS subcommittees to weigh in on whether the division receives a separate budget line in the next spending cycle.

Sources

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