Privilege Denied: Supreme Court Rejects Appeal By White and Asian Parents Challenging Boston Schools’ ‘Race Neutral’ Strategy That Increased Admission of Black and Hispanic Students

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a case brought on behalf of white and Asian American parents who were challenging a pandemic-era admissions policy of Boston Public Schools (BPS) aimed at increasing the socioeconomic diversity at its three prestigious “exam schools.” Justice Samuel Alito, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, strongly dissented with the majority decision to reject the case. Alito called the BPS admissions policy a “glaring constitutional error that threatens to perpetuate race-based affirmative action” in his written statement. The Supreme court of United States of America. (Getty Images/Grant Faint) The lawsuit, filed by the Boston Parent Coalition For Academic Excellence, took issue with a decision by BPS in 2020 to change its admission criteria to make the student bodies at Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the O’Bryant School of Math and Science, which have historically leaned white and wealthy, more representative of Boston’s student population as a whole. Instead of admitting students with the highest standardized test scores and grade point averages, as it had for decades, the school board opted to nix the exam (which was not possible to administer during the COVID-19 pandemic) and to adopt a “race neutral strategy” that relied on applicants’...