Supreme Court to Review Challenge to Race-Neutral Magnet School Admissions Policies

On October 19, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education (“AFEF”), a case that will shape how courts across the country evaluate facially race-neutral admissions policies at selective public middle and high schools. The decision in AFEF could have particular significance in Philadelphia, where the admissions criteria for the city’s competitive “magnet” schools have already been the subject of similar litigation.

Background: From Harvard/SFFA to “Race-Neutral” Policies

A magnet or criteria-based school is a public middle or high school that offers a rigorous academic program and admits students through a competitive admissions process, often based on grades and other factors. Schools like Masterman in Philadelphia, Stuyvesant High School in New York, and Boston Latin School in Boston are designed to serve high-achieving students by providing advanced coursework and a challenging college-preparatory environment.

In 2023, the Supreme Court held in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-conscious admissions policies in higher education violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. While the Harvard/SFFA decision addressed admissions policies that explicitly consider race, AFEF presents a different and increasingly common scenario—admissions policies that do not mention race at all but have affected the racial makeup of schools. For these kinds of facially race-neutral admissions policies, plaintiffs who claim that the policies violate the Equal Protection Clause must generally show the policy has both a discriminatory impact (or effect) and a discriminatory purpose in order to prevail.

A Split Among the Federal Appellate Courts

By agreeing to hear AFEF, the Supreme Court will resolve a genuine disagreement among the federal circuit courts over how to measure the discriminatory impact of a facially race-neutral admissions policy:

• The First and Fourth Circuits require a “success rate” comparison—i.e., a demographic group’s share of admission offers measured against its share of applicants, relative to other demographic groups. Under that approach, a simple “before-and-after” decrease in one group’s share of admissions offers is not enough. Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas have been particularly critical of this approach.
• The Second and Third Circuits take a broader view—they hold that aggregate, group-wide statistics are not the only acceptable proof of discriminatory impact; rather, plaintiffs may also rely on before-and-after enrollment data and/or a showing that individual applicants were actually harmed by the admissions policy.

How the Supreme Court resolves this circuit split will set a single national standard governing these claims, and in turn will likely also affect how magnet school admissions policies are crafted across the country.

The Question Before the Court

The Supreme Court limited its review in AFEF to a single, technical—but consequential—question: how a plaintiff proves that a race-neutral admissions policy has a discriminatory impact. Specifically, the Court agreed to decide:

Whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool.

The underlying case concerns admissions policies for selective magnet middle-school programs run by the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. Under the new admissions policy, all fifth graders who met a series of criteria—including grades, reading level, and standardized test scores—were placed in a pool, from which students were selected by lottery for admission to magnet programs. The Association for Education Fairness filed suit against the Montgomery County Board of Education alleging that the admissions policy changes were designed to reduce Asian American student enrollment. The plaintiffs sought to establish discriminatory impact through a before-and-after comparison showing that significantly fewer Asian American students were admitted after the policy took effect.

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the claim, applying its 2023 decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. That decision held, among other things, that using before-and-after admissions numbers to establish discriminatory impact improperly treated the previous status quo as an immutable quota, effectively locking schools into whatever racial composition the earlier policy happened to produce.

The Philadelphia Connection: Sargent v. School District of Philadelphia

The Third Circuit’s decision on the broader side of the circuit split, Sargent v. School District of Philadelphia, involved the School District of Philadelphia’s revised admissions policy for its most competitive magnet high schools (Masterman, Central, Palumbo, and Carver), that included a preference for applicants from certain ZIP codes. A group of parents challenging the policy alleged that while the ZIP code preference was facially neutral, it was designed to alter the racial composition of these prestigious public schools in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

In October 2024, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the school district, concluding that no reasonable factfinder could find the admissions policy discriminatory. But on appeal, the Third Circuit vacated the district court’s decision because it found that sufficient evidence existed for a jury to find both discriminatory purpose and discriminatory impact. On impact, the Third Circuit pointed to dramatic shifts in the racial composition of both the qualified applicant pool and enrolled students after the policy took effect. It expressly declined to follow the Fourth Circuit’s “success rate” framework, holding that discriminatory impact can be shown through individual harm, not just aggregate data.

Why the AFEF Ruling Matters for Philadelphia and Elsewhere

Although Sargent was subsequently resolved through a settlement, the Supreme Court’s decision in AFEF will have implications for parents and children in the Philadelphia region as it will establish how any future magnet school admissions policy is evaluated by a court. Magnet schools have long served as a ladder of opportunity—a chance at a top-tier public education that can change the trajectory of a child’s life. Many families in Philadelphia plan around access to the city’s selective magnet high schools, often basing their decision to continue residing in the city on their child’s admission into one of them. The same is true in other large cities like New York and Boston, each of which have extremely competitive magnet school admissions programs. The standard the Supreme Court sets in AFEF could shape whether, and how, school districts across the country change their magnet school admissions policies moving forward.

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