美国最高法院周一同意审理一起针对马里兰州一个县的彩票录取政策的诉讼，该政策用于四所精英公立初中，一些家长称该政策对亚裔美国申请人构成非法歧视。
The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider reviving a lawsuit against a Maryland county's lottery admissions policy for four elite public middle schools that some parents claim unlawfully discriminates against Asian American applicants.
就在学生录取中的种族问题再次引发争议之际，大法官们受理了一个家长联盟的上诉，该联盟对下级法院驳回其主张的决定提出上诉，即蒙哥马利县的政策违反了美国宪法第十四修正案关于法律面前人人平等的保证。最高法院预计将在6月底前审理此案并作出裁决。
Delving again into the contentious issue of race in student admissions, the justices took up an appeal by a coalition of parents of a lower court's decision rejecting their claim that Montgomery County's policy violates the US Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case and rule by the end of June.
家长们起诉，旨在挑战该县学术严格的“磁铁”学校的入学政策，这些学校为成绩优秀的六至八年级学生提供数学、科学或人文学科的拓展课程。这些学校包括银泉的塔科马公园初中和杰曼敦的马丁·路德·金初中。
The parents sued to challenge the entrance policies for the county's academically rigorous "magnet" schools, which provide enrichment programs in math and science, or the humanities, for high-achieving students in sixth through eighth grades. They include Takoma Park Middle School in Silver Spring and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Germantown.
此案代表了对某些高度选择性公立学校入学政策的最新法律挑战，挑战者批评这些学校继续通过“种族平衡”来提升多样性。
The case represents the latest legal attack on entrance policies at certain highly selective public schools that challengers critique for continuing to pursue "racial balancing" with the aim of boosting diversity.
最高法院在2023年作出了一项具有里程碑意义的裁决，驳回了长期用于增加校园中黑人、西班牙裔及其他少数族裔学生人数的种族意识型大学录取政策。
The Supreme Court issued a landmark 2023 ruling that rejected race-conscious college and university admissions policies long used to raise the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on campuses.
在这些新的法律挑战中，原告声称，尽管这些享有盛誉的项目在表面上是种族中立的，但它们利用诸如社会经济地位等替代指标，以实现追求多样性过程中相同的非法、基于种族的结果。
Plaintiffs in these new legal challenges claim that admissions to these prestigious programs, though race-neutral on the surface, use proxies such as socioeconomic status to achieve the same unlawful, race-based result in pursuit of diversity.
这些法律挑战与唐纳德·特朗普总统自去年重返白宫以来实施的政策相吻合，其政策旨在反对教育领域以及美国政府、军队和私营企业中的多元化、公平与包容（DEI）项目。
The legal challenges coincide with President Donald Trump's policies, implemented since he returned to office last year, against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in education, as well as in the US government and military, and in private companies.
马里兰州案件的争议在于，如果某项政策未对该种族群体造成不成比例的伤害，下级法院是否可以驳回故意种族歧视的指控。在此案中，涉及的群体是亚裔美国学生。蒙哥马利县是华盛顿特区的一个富裕郊区。
At issue in the Maryland case is whether lower courts may dismiss claims of intentional racial discrimination if the policy has not disproportionately harmed that racial group, in this instance Asian American students. Montgomery County is a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC.
该家长联盟名为“教育公平协会”，由太平洋法律基金会代表。太平洋法律基金会是一个自由主义法律团体，曾在弗吉尼亚州和马萨诸塞州提出过类似的挑战。最高法院在2024年驳回了这些案件。
The parent coalition, called the Association for Education Fairness, is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal group that has pursued similar challenges in Virginia and Massachusetts. The Supreme Court rejected those cases in 2024.
蒙哥马利县学区的选拔程序是在2021-2022学年引入的，当时正值新冠肺炎疫情期间。该程序会筛选所有学生的学术潜力，然后通过抽签的方式，从该群体中随机分配学生进入磁校或当地学校接受强化教学。该诉讼称，抽签制度导致亚裔美国学生在磁校的录取人数减少。
The Montgomery County school district's selection process was introduced in the 2021-2022 school year, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It screens all students for academic potential, and then implements a lottery to randomly assign students from that pool to receive enriched instruction at either a magnet school or a local school. The lawsuit said that the lottery system led to a lower number of Asian American student placements at the magnet schools.
诉讼还称，筛选过程使得亚裔美国学生更难进入抽签池。挑战方称，这些学生集中在“高表现、低贫困的小学”。该程序的一部分是通过将学生的考试成绩与家庭收入水平相近的其他学生的成绩进行比较来评分。
The suit alleged that the screening process makes it harder for Asian American students, who the challengers said are clustered in "high performing, low-poverty elementary schools" to enter the lottery pool. Part of the process ranks a student's performance by comparing the student's test scores against those of other students whose family incomes are at a similar level.
美国地方法官保拉·希尼斯在2022年驳回了此案，认定该政策未对亚裔美国学生造成不成比例的负担。她指出，被录取的亚裔美国学生所占比例超过了所有申请磁校学生中亚裔美国学生的比例。希尼斯还认为，没有证据表明该抽签政策是在具有歧视性意图的情况下实施的。
US District Judge Paula Xinis threw out the case in 2022, finding that the policy did not place a disproportionate burden on Asian American students. The judge noted that the percentage of admitted Asian American students exceeded the percentage of Asian Americans among all applicants to the magnet schools. Xinis also found that there was no evidence that the lottery policy was implemented with discriminatory intent.
总部位于弗吉尼亚州里士满的美国第四巡回上诉法院维持了驳回的决定，同意该诉讼“未能合理主张所质疑的政策对亚裔美国学生产生不成比例的影响”。“种族平衡就是种族歧视，”家长方的律师在向最高法院提交的文件中表示。
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, agreeing that the lawsuit "does not plausibly allege that the challenged policy disparately impacts Asian American students." "Racial balancing is racial discrimination," lawyers for the parents told the Supreme Court in a filing.
他们补充称，第四巡回法院的裁决“允许通过代理方式进行的某种程度的种族歧视”。
The 4th Circuit's ruling permits "some racial discrimination so long as it is done through a proxy," they added.
最高法院2023年关于平权行动的裁决推翻了数十年的先例，废除了哈佛大学和北卡罗来纳大学使用的、将种族作为学生录取评估众多因素之一的项目。
The Supreme Court's 2023 affirmative action ruling upended decades of precedent, striking down programs used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that took race into account as one of many factors in student admissions evaluations.