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The plaintiff in the lawsuit challenges the 2018 expansion of an NYC program designed to expand access to New York City’s Specialized High Schools, a group of selective public schools. The discovery program enables high-achieving students from low-income communities who attend middle schools with high economic need and score just below the standardized test cutoff to earn admission to the Specialized High Schools after completing a summer preparation session.

Historically, access to these Specialized High Schools has been limited by the need to compete on the basis of a single test. Students with greater racial, social, and economic privilege are far more likely to access these elite, though public, schools. For example, at the start of this litigation, Black and Latine students received only 190 of the 4,324 offers of admission to the eight Specialized High Schools for the coming school year. Moreover, while most public schools send no students to the Specialized High Schools, 50 percent of all offers go to students from fewer than 30 of the approximately 600 middle schools.

The discovery program is a pathway for disadvantaged students to also access these schools. To increase access to the schools, in 2018, New York City added a measure to this method of admissions, taking into account whether the student attends a middle school with high economic need, in addition to their own family income status.

The plaintiff alleges the 2018 expansion is racially discriminatory against Asian American students, even though it is based on economic need, not race.

We intervened in the case on behalf of students and community groups to defend the modest steps taken by New York City to increase access for disadvantaged students to the most competitive and highly-regarded public high schools. We represent Teens Take Charge –– a public-school student led organization, Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), and the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF).

On July 1, 2026, we along with NYC moved to dismiss the sole remaining plaintiff, an organization called Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY), on the grounds that it has no members harmed by the program. That motion is pending before the court.