For immediate release: Over 80 Asian American Organizations Ask the U.S. Supreme Court to Hear the Boston Exam School Case
Livingston, New Jersey: Representing over 80 Asian American and other organizations nationwide, on May 17, 2024, the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE), along with the Asian American Legal Foundation (AALF) and Friends of Lowell Foundation (FOLF), submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, requesting the Court to hear the case of Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence v. the School Committee for the City of Boston.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ban on using race and race proxies in college admissions, school authorities in Boston and Fairfax County, Virginia, continue to blatantly employ race proxies to discriminate against Asian American students. Once again, the American community has formed a united front to combat systemic racial discrimination in K-12 education. Our amicus brief is cosigned by 82 equal education rights advocacy groups representing Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans, including AACE, AALF, FOLF, Silicon Valley Chinese Association, Coalition for TJ, Californians for Equal Rights, 80-20 Education Foundation, and the American Hindu Coalition.
In our amicus brief, we highlight the flaws in Boston’s racist admissions scheme, providing substantial evidence of racial animus against Asians by the commission during the initial planning and implementation of the new admissions system. Notably, a chair of the commission resigned after making anti-Asian slurs on a ‘hot mic’ during one of the commission’s meetings.
We challenge the prevailing narrative that Asians, who were well represented in the schools in question, did not contribute to diversity. The Boston committee’s concept of ‘diversity’ seemed to focus solely on increasing the representation of Blacks and Latinos. Our brief also contests the notion that Asians are ‘overrepresented,’ which not only fuels modern hostility and violence against Asians but also draws parallels to a long history of violence, racism, and discrimination against our community.
We also warned: “America exists in a competitive world. If we are to retain our leading position we need to place more emphasis on merit, not less. Attempts to destroy the academic nature of selective high schools in the name of collectivist “equity” are not only unconstitutional, they are misguided in terms of those they purport to help. Deficiencies in K-8 education should be addressed, but they cannot be remedied by racially balancing academic high schools—something that will only serve to destroy academic schools, depriving Americans of all ethnicities of a valuable public resource.”
Mr. Yukong Mike Zhao, President of AACE, stated: “Under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, progressives have launched a widespread assault on American meritocracy, extending anti-Asian discrimination from colleges to K-12 education. The U.S. Supreme Court should address the Boston Exam Schools Case and unequivocally ban the use of race or race proxies in school admissions across America, not only in college admissions.”
The link to the amicus brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-1137/310101/20240517164521542_23-1137%20Brief.pdf
Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE)
Asian American Legal Foundation (AALF)
MEDIA CONTACTS:
- Swann Lee, Phone: 617-651-1328, Email: swanleeca@gmail.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 and exposed the Ivy League college’s anti-Asian discrimination on the national stage. Over the last eight 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 fighting for Asian-American children’s equal educational rights.
About AALF, Asian American Legal Foundation (AALF)
Asian American Legal Foundation (AALF) is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, was founded in 1994 to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans. AALF focuses its work on situations where Asian Americans are discriminated against for a purportedly benign purpose and where high profile groups and individuals deny that discrimination even exists. Members of AALF were instrumental in the struggle to end discrimination against Chinese American students in the San Francisco, California public school system, and since 1994, AALF has ensured that the voice of the Asian American community has been represented in amicus filings in every major civil rights case before the United States Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court.