PRESS RELEASE
AACE and Ten Partner Organizations Urge U.S. Supreme Court to Strike Down Montgomery County’s Discriminatory Magnet School Admissions Plan
August 27, 2026, Livingston, NJ — On August 26, 2026, the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) and ten partner organizations jointly filed an amicus curiae brief in Case No. 26‑12, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Montgomery County Board of Education’s discriminatory admissions plan for its magnet middle schools. Partner organizations include the Asian American Legal Foundation, Asian American Parents Wootton, Asian American Rights Association, Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, Coalition for TJ, Equal Rights for All PAC, San Diego Asian Americans for Equality, Silicon Valley Chinese American Association Foundation, and United Against Racism in Education.
The brief demonstrates that Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) deliberately redesigned its admissions system to reduce Asian American enrollment by manipulating facially neutral criteria and using race proxies to achieve a predetermined racial outcome. The Board’s stated goal — making the racial composition of magnet programs “reflect the population mix” — constitutes unconstitutional racial balancing.
The amicus brief presents five core arguments:
- MCPS cannot evade strict scrutiny by disguising racial engineering behind “neutral” criteria. The record shows the admissions plan was intentionally crafted to lower Asian American representation. Courts must look beyond facial neutrality when government actors manipulate criteria to achieve racial results.
- The plan is part of a broader activist “racial equity” movement that threatens merit‑based schools nationwide. MCPS’s policy reflects a national trend toward replacing objective standards with racial proportionality, endangering the few remaining high‑performing public schools that rely on merit.
- Eliminating objective admissions criteria harms all students and undermines America’s competitiveness. Removing academic standards deepens racial divisions, weakens STEM pipelines, and damages the nation’s long‑term innovation capacity.
- MCPS’s rationale echoes historic stereotypes used to justify discrimination against Asian Americans. The brief traces the long history of anti‑Asian discrimination — including the Page Act, Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese American internment, and exclusion from elite schools — showing that MCPS’s policies revive harmful patterns of treating Asian Americans as a group to be limited.
- The Supreme Court must forbid the cynical use of race proxies to preserve equal protection. If governments can achieve racial outcomes indirectly, equal protection will erode nationwide. The brief urges the Court to close this loophole decisively.
AACE President Yukong Zhao stated: “As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, our public schools must recommit to the founding principles of equality, fairness, and individual merit. Montgomery County’s admissions plan is a clear example of unconstitutional racial engineering. The U.S. Supreme Court must act to stop it.”
The full amicus brief is available on the Supreme Court’s website. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/26/26-12/420192/20260826142851725_26-12-Amicus%20Brief.pdf
Media Contact: Dr. Sam Yan, telephone: 703-470-3292; email: samuelyan@msn.com.
About the AACE: www.asianamericanforeducation.org
Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) is a non-political, nonprofit, grassroots national alliance with over 300 partnering organizations nationwide. Since 2015, AACE have been mobilizing Asian communities to stand firmly behind SFFA in its lawsuits against Harvard and UNC. AACE helped expose the Ivy League college’s anti-Asian discrimination on the national stage. Over the last nine years, AACE teamed up with over 360 Asian American organizations, organized the Boston Rally in 2018 and “Equal Education for All” rally in 2022, encouraged Asian American students to join SFFA’s lawsuits, and filed five amicus briefs. Besides supporting SFFA, we have advanced the cause of equal education rights for the Asian-American community in many other areas, including federal adoption of AACE policy recommendation on college admissions in July 2018, federal lawsuit against Yale University in 2020, support to Asian Americans’ fights for equal education rights in Maryland, New York, Washington, California, Massachusetts and other states. AACE is the proven leader in advocating meritocracy and educational excellence in America.