Race Discrimination in Admissions Suit Against U Washington Can Go Forward

From Zhong v. Univ. of Wash. Bd. of Regents, decided yesterday by Judge James Robart (W.D. Wash.):

This civil rights action arises from the University’s rejection of Stanley’s application to enroll in its undergraduate computer science program in Fall 2023. Plaintiffs assert that “Defendants have engaged in systemic racial discrimination against Asian American applicants” by requiring them “to meet higher standards of academic and extracurricular achievement than applicants of other races.” …

Plaintiffs represent that Stanley is a resident of California and a highly qualified applicant for undergraduate admission. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Stanley was among the top students academically at his high school, scored well on standardized college admissions exams, and “took on leadership roles in a variety of academic and volunteer organizations.” Stanley is a “self-taught programmer” who earned “top honors in some of the world’s most competitive coding contests[.]” ([Complaint] ¶¶ 40-41 (listing the competitions); see also id. ¶¶ 43-44 (describing notable coding initatives).) When Stanley was 13 years old, Google offered him a full-time software engineer interview before learning that he was ineligible for employment based on his age. Just before his 18th birthday, Stanley successfully re-applied for a software engineering position at Google. When Plaintiffs filed suit, Stanley worked for Google as a software engineer. (See id. ¶ 50 (describing the outcome of his January 2025 full-year job performance evaluation).) …

Stanley alleges that even if the University’s admissions criteria and process are facially race-neutral, the fact that the Allen School has target goals of increasing the percentages of specific underrepresented minorities leads to the inference that the University is nevertheless considering applicants’ race. Whether racial discrimination occurs below the surface of the University’s admissions decisions is a factual question that is not appropriate to resolve on a motion to dismiss.

The court concludes that Stanley has plausibly alleged racial discrimination in the
University’s admissions process…. Here, the [School of Computer Science & Engineering] DEIA Plan describes a plan to “[m]easure the percentage of domestic Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/ Alaska Native, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander undergraduates and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 15% (the UW-Seattle average).” Similarly, the [School's] BPC [Departmental Broadening Participation in Computing] Plan states that one of its six “‘stretch goals’ for the next 5 years” is to “[i]ncrease the percentage of domestic BHN [Black, Hispanic, Native] undergraduates to the UW-Seattle average[.]“

These documents, taken together, plausibly support Stanley’s claims. In sum, viewing the complaint and incorporated documents and all reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to Stanley, the court concludes that he has sufficiently alleged that race is considered as a factor in the University’s admissions process to achieve racial balancing.

This is just a decision denying a motion to dismiss, so, as the court notes, it concludes only that plaintiffs had plausibly alleged discrimination, not that they had proven discrimination. But now that the motion to dismiss has been denied, they will be able to use discovery to find more information relevant to their claims, and the court will then evaluate what they find at the motion for summary judgment stage (and perhaps eventually at trial).

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