A parents group that claims Boston Public Schools’ exam schools admissions policy discriminates against white and Asian students is promising to appeal after their federal lawsuit was dismissed Thursday.
The suit, filed by the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence last summer, argues that the district unlawfully uses socioeconomic tiers as a proxy for race when determining which students to admit to the city’s three prestigious exam schools: Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science.
U.S. District Court Judge William Young rejected that claim, ruling that the district’s plan is “race-neutral” and constitutional.
A spokesperson for Boston Public Schools said the district’s policy is lawful and fully consistent with legal precedent.
“BPS is committed to continuing to provide high-achieving students with strong learning opportunities at all of our schools and to partnering with families and school communities to ensure that young people from every neighborhood have equitable access to a high-quality, rigorous education,” the spokesperson said.
The current policy was adopted in 2021 by the Boston School Committee, which has made several minor adjustments to it over the past few years. It groups the city into socioeconomic tiers where students compete among peers only within the same tier.
The coalition, which is largely composed of white residents, filed their current lawsuit in July, claiming that the tiers are intended to reduce the number of white and Asian students admitted to the exam schools.
Prior to the pandemic, the admissions process was city-wide and based only on grades and entrance exam scores. An overrepresentation of white and Asian students at the exam schools compared to the district as a whole led to calls for a more racially equitable policy.
Chris Kieser, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation that is representing the families, said the ruling is just one step in a larger legal fight.
“What we’re going to do is appeal to the First Circuit, and we are going to argue within the confines of the First Circuit’s precedent, which is the first case, or the ZIP code case,” he said.
That’s in reference to a prior lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation in 2020 after the Boston School Committee voted to temporarily grant admission based on grades and ZIP code.
The first circuit ruled against the parents in that case and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take it up in 2024, partly because the zip code plan had already been replaced.
Judge William Young, who also oversaw the prior case, referenced the ZIP code plan and the current policy in his Thursday ruling.
“Both plans are undisputably facially race-neutral and fail to demonstrate aggregate disparate impact when using the comparator of school-aged population,” he wrote.
Young added that the parent’s claim that the newer admissions policy violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment failed as a matter of law under the prior ruling.
Kieser said he doesn’t believe Young applied the correct legal analysis, especially in light of contradictory rulings in similar cases elsewhere in the country.
“The way he wrote the opinion, he understood that there is a split among circuits,” he said, “Now, we’re going to appeal to the First Circuit and ask them to clarify what the standard is.”
