Justice Sonia Sotomayor has turned down an emergency request from a Brooklyn mother who wanted to enroll her Asian-American son at a prestigious high school in New York City. The mother claims that a city program designed to admit students from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods discriminates against Asian students.
The lawsuit, launched by Yi Fang Chen after her son was rejected from Stuyvesant High School, argues that the updated admissions criteria in New York City intentionally disadvantage Asian applicants while boosting the number of Black and Hispanic students. Chen filed this lawsuit in April, asserting that the city has violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Dean McGee, representing Chen with the Pacific Legal Foundation, expressed frustration over the delayed proceedings but noted confidence that the court would affirm vital equal protection principles, ensuring all students, including Chen’s son, have equal educational opportunities regardless of race.
Sotomayor did not elaborate on her decision to deny the emergency request, which is linked to an ongoing case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Chen’s son, referred to as M.P. in legal filings, achieved a score of 558 on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), just three points shy of the threshold for admission. The lawsuit contends that M.P. would have been accepted had the city not raised the cutoff score. This adjustment was made when the city allocated 20% of its admissions for students classified as “economically disadvantaged,” a change that stemmed from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2018 expansion of the Discovery program.
Interestingly, this program is only available to students from middle schools where a minimum of 60% of students are recognized as economically disadvantaged. As a result, some economically disadvantaged students find themselves excluded if their school does not meet this criterion.
This year, no student admitted through the Discovery program scored higher than 495, which is at least 66 points below the standard cutoff for those admitted based solely on their SHSAT scores.
Even though around three-quarters of Asian-American students in New York City come from low-income families, many attended middle schools that didn’t qualify under this 60% threshold.
The lawsuit highlights internal communications from the New York City Department of Education and the Mayor’s Office, which Chen’s attorneys argue indicate a deliberate intent to increase Black and Hispanic student enrollment at the expense of Asian applicants.
In a statement, McGee emphasized that Chen’s son was denied a place at Stuyvesant because the city transformed a program intended to assist economically disadvantaged students into a means of promoting racial diversity, effectively sidelining many disadvantaged children across the city. He reiterated that equal protection involves treating children as individuals rather than mere statistics.
