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Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied a Brooklyn mother’s emergency bid to enroll her Asian American son at an elite New York City high school, alleging that a city program geared toward admitting students from economically challenged neighborhood into the school discriminates against Asian students.
The lawsuit centers on allegations by Yi Fang Chen, whose son was denied admission to Stuyvesant High School, that New York City’s revised admissions requirements intentionally discriminate against Asian students while increasing enrollment among Black and Hispanic students. Chen filed the lawsuit in April, accusing the city of violating the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Delayed justice is always frustrating, but we remain confident that the courts will ultimately uphold core equal protection principles and ensure that no student, including our client’s son, is treated as less deserving of educational opportunities because of their race,” Dean McGee, an attorney for the plaintiff with Pacific Legal Foundation, told Fox News Digital.
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Sotomayor did not offer an explanation Monday for denying the emergency bid, which stems from a lawsuit pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Chen’s son, identified as M.P. in court documents, scored a 558 on the Specialized High School Admissions Test — a requirement for admission. He was just three points shy of being admitted for the school year, but the lawsuit argues that M.P. would have been admitted if the city had not raised the cutoff score, a change attributed to the city reserving 20% of its admissions for students deemed “economically disadvantaged.” The change was part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s expansion of the Discovery program in 2018.
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The program was limited to students who attended middle schools where at least 60% of students were considered economically disadvantaged, meaning some economically disadvantaged students could be excluded from the program if their school fell below the threshold.
No student admitted through the Discovery program this year scored higher than 495 — at least 66 points below the cutoff for students admitted based solely on the SHSAT without economic disadvantage considered.
Although nearly three-quarters of Asian American students in New York City come from low-income families, many attended middle schools that did not meet the 60% Economic Need Index threshold.
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The lawsuit points to internal communications from the New York City Department of Education and the Mayor’s Office that Chen’s attorneys allege show the program’s intent was to increase enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at the expense of Asian students.
“Yi Fang Chen’s son was denied a seat at Stuyvesant because the City turned a program meant to help economically disadvantaged students into a tool for racial engineering—one that actually excluded disadvantaged children throughout the city,” Dean McGee, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a statement. “Equal protection means treating kids as individuals, not as demographic statistics.”
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