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US Supreme Court to hear Maryland case involving race in school admissions · GNN Daily Breaking News

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  Speaker 1: The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a
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  Speaker 1: major constitutional challenge regarding a Maryland school district's magnet school
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  Speaker 1: admissions policy, returning the high court to the contentious debate
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  Speaker 1: over race and public education. The justices announced they will
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  Speaker 1: review a lawsuit filed against Montgomery County Public Schools by
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  Speaker 1: the Association for Education Fairness, a coalition representing local Asian
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  Speaker 1: American parents. The advocacy group contends that restructured admissions protocols
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  Speaker 1: for four elite public middle schools, which utilize a lottery
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  Speaker 1: system alongside socioeconomic rankings, were intentionally designed to reduce Asian
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  Speaker 1: American enrollment in favor of other minority groups under the
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  Speaker 1: guise of diversity. The High Court explicitly limited its review
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  Speaker 1: to a singular, foundational legal question. Whether plaintiffs challenging a
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  Speaker 1: facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must prove that
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  Speaker 1: a targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative
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  Speaker 1: to its share of the total applicant pool. Lower federal courts,
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  Speaker 1: including the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit,
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  Speaker 1: dismissed the parents' lawsuit after finding that Asian American students
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  Speaker 1: continued to secure seats in numbers exceeding their overall percentage
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  Speaker 1: within the total applicant pool. However, attorneys from the Pacific
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  Speaker 1: Legal Foundation representing the parents argue that comparing outcomes strictly
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  Speaker 1: against broad applicant pools allows school districts to use socioeconomic
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  Speaker 1: proxies to achieve subtle racial balancing. The upcoming case follows
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  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's landmark 2023 decision that struck down affirmative
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  Speaker 1: action in higher education admissions at Harvard University and the
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  Speaker 1: University of North Carolina. While that earlier ruling prohibited colleges
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  Speaker 1: from directly considering an applicant's race, public school systems across
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  Speaker 1: the country have increasingly adopted race-neutral alternatives such as geographic preferences,
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  Speaker 1: income metrics, and lottery pools. to maintain student body diversity.
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  Speaker 1: Civil rights organizations defending the Montgomery County policy warned that
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  Speaker 1: a ruling favoring the plaintiffs could severely restrict public school
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  Speaker 1: districts from taking any proactive measures to address historical educational
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  Speaker 1: inequities or expand access for underrepresented communities. With oral arguments
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  Speaker 1: expected in the coming months and a definitive decision anticipated
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  Speaker 1: by the end of June, The outcome carries major implications
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  Speaker 1: for selective public high schools and magnet programs nationwide. A
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  Speaker 1: ruling in favor of the parent coalition could significantly lower
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  Speaker 1: the legal threshold required to challenge proxy-based diversity policies under
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  Speaker 1: the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, subjecting municipal education initiatives
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  Speaker 1: to intense federal judicial scrutiny. As public school boards monitor
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  Speaker 1: the proceedings, Civil rights advocates and legal experts emphasize that
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  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's eventual ruling will fundamentally define the future
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  Speaker 1: boundaries of diversity, equity, and merit in American public education.