Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District

Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District was a 1994 lawsuit by the Asian American Legal Foundation challenging the use of racial quotas limiting the enrollment of Chinese-Americans by the San Francisco Unified School District. As a result of the case, San Francisco Unified school district switched to a system using a "diversity index" that excluded race as an alternative to the quota system.

Ten years later

The Ho case ended express use of race in San Francisco public school assignment. The parties to the original desegregation agreement (NAACP v. SFUSD) failed to respond to the challenge to justify the use of race as a factor in admissions. The Ho case was not an adjudication of the merits. The school district was not prepared to make its case and, hence, settled. In the new Consent Decree, the Diversity Index did not use race. Substitues for race, such as language of the mother and income were used. Nevertheless, the subjective purpose of using a Diversity Index was racial, as the success or failure of the Diversity Index is always discussed in terms of its racial impact. The Diversity Index can be argued to be discriminatory as applied.

Yet all parties agreed to it. The Diversity Index has been less effective in producing racial integration than express use of race. The HO case has brought more fairness to school assignment in that racial caps were eliminated. The San Francisco Public Schools is a better place for the Ho case.

References

* [http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~tjou/words/law/GrutterSchool.pdf "Grutter" Goes Back to School: Revisiting "Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District"]