Judge tosses racial bias challenge to Boston's elite school admissions policy

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON, March 19 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by a group of parents who claimed the city of Boston's admissions system for its three elite high schools unlawfully discriminated against white student applicants.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston rejected arguments by the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence that the policy relied on socio-economic proxies for race that violate the U.S. Constitution.

The coalition, represented by lawyers at the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation, filed the case last year after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 turned away its challenge to an earlier admissions policy that Boston adopted with an eye toward boosting student diversity that relied on zip codes.

Among the three schools covered by that policy was Boston Latin School, which was founded in 1635 and is the oldest public school in the United States.

Young oversaw that earlier case as well, and his decision upholding the zip code-reliant policy was later affirmed by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Young on Thursday said the latest admissions system "possesses the same factual pillars" the 1st Circuit rejected.

"Both plans are undisputably facially race-neutral and fail to demonstrate aggregate disparate impact when using the comparator of school-aged population," wrote Young, who was appointed by Republican former President Ronald Reagan.

He said as a result, the coalition's claims that the newer admissions policy violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment failed as a matter of law under the 1st Circuit's prior holding.

Christopher Kieser, a lawyer for the plaintiff at Pacific Legal Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is one of several that the Pacific Legal Foundation has pursued in recent years, challenging facially race-neutral admissions policies public schools have adopted to boost diversity in elite magnet schools.

They differ from the race-conscious admissions policies deployed by universities to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, and other minority students on their campuses that the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court rejected in 2023.

The case before Young challenged a system Boston Public Schools deployed for the 2022-2023 admissions cycle that created eight equally sized socio-economic tiers based on factors including limited English households, single-parent households, owner-occupied households, educational attainment, and poverty.

Students competed for spots within their tiers based on their GPA and then received bonus points if they attended high-poverty elementary schools, experienced homelessness, had been in the foster care system or lived in public housing.

In the four years since the initial tier-based system took effect, the percentage of Black students admitted to exam schools increased from 14% to 20% while Hispanic students rose from 21% to 27%. The percentage of white students invited to attend them fell from 40% to 27%, city data shows.

The Boston School Committee has adjusted the policy annually. In November, it voted to adopt changes that would open up to 20% of seats at those schools to top-performing children citywide. Projections suggest that could result in fewer Black and Hispanic students earning spots.

The case is Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence v. Boston School Committee, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:25-cv-12015.

For the plaintiff: Christopher Kieser of Pacific Legal Foundation

For Boston: John Simon and Kay Hodge of Stoneham, Chandler & Miller

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US Supreme Court rejects Boston case over race in school admissions

US court rejects race bias claims over Boston school admission policy