NYC’s high school affirmative action policy challenged in Supreme Court
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesA New York City mother has asked the Supreme Court to step in and order her son be allowed to take a seat at the selective Stuyvesant High School, saying he’s being blocked by affirmative action policies that punish him for being Asian American.
The boy is in his freshman year and the mother, Yi Fang Chen, said the justices are now his only chance to “salvage” the academic year.
Stuyvesant is considered one of the premier public schools in the country, and admits students on merit.
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Ms. Chen said her son, identified in her Supreme Court petition by the initials MP, would be at the school but for a racial balancing policy that penalizes Asian Americans.
Stuyvesant generally offers admissions based strictly on the results of an exam, but it allows some students to enter based on its “Discovery Program,” which applies to economically disadvantaged students whose test scores are close but below the cutoff line.
In 2018 New York City, under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, expanded the Discovery Program to boost Black and Latino enrollment at Stuyesant and the city’s other selective high schools. Discovery seats went from about 3% of enrollment to 20%, and the program was limited to certain middle schools, Ms. Chen said.
“Race was the driving force behind this overhaul,” she argued to the justices through her lawyer.
Her son scored a 558 on the entrance exam, just shy of the 561 cutoff. Ms. Chen said if the Discovery Program hadn’t been expanded to take more slots, it is “undisputed” that he would have been enrolled in Stuyvesant.
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Ms. Chen has asked the justices for an emergency ruling allowing her son to attend the school while the case proceeds.
The Washington Times has sought comment from the school system.
The case comes to the high court three years after the justices, in a major ruling, struck down race-based admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
Those cases also involved Asian American plaintiffs who argued they were denied because of policies that favored Black and Hispanic students.
The court’s majority agreed, and said race cannot be a factor, though hardship, economic disadvantage or other factors — which may correlate with race but aren’t explicitly tied to it — can be considered.
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New York’s policy was adopted before that ruling.
Ms. Chen had been aggrieved by the policy from the start. She was part of a lawsuit in 2018, when her son was just a first grader, arguing the changes would harm him in the future.
A court ruled that was too tentative a connection and booted her from the lawsuit, though other plaintiffs were allowed to proceed. In the end, the federal district court said there wasn’t enough evidence to show that the policy was harming Asian American students’ chances at Stuyvesant.
An appeals court would later vacate that ruling and the case is still percolating in lower courts.
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Ms. Chen then sued again on her own this spring, with her son’s freshman year approaching. A federal court rebuffed her demand for an injunction allowing her son into the school, and the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month also refused to step in.
“With MP’s freshman year ongoing and no other avenue for immediate relief, Ms. Chen seeks an emergency injunction in this Court requiring his admission to Stuyvesant while the appeal is pending,” Glenn Roper, her lawyer, told the justices.
The Supreme Court in 2024 rejected a challenge to the admissions policy of another premier school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Virginia’s Fairfax County.
An appeals court had ruled that the school’s adoption of a geography-based policy was likely legal, even if it did serve to cut the number of Asian American students.
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Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called that ruling “flagrantly wrong” and argued the high court should have heard the case.
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Stephen Dinan
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