New Article: Brown’s Lost Promise: New York City Specialized High Schools as a Case Study in the Illusory Support for Class-Based Affirmative Action

Ayyan Zubair, Brown’s Lost Promise: New York City Specialized High Schools as a Case Study in the Illusory Support for Class-Based Affirmative Action, 11 Calif. L. Rev. 557 (2021). Summary below:

Using the case study of Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School PTO, Inc. v. de Blasio, a lawsuit challenging New York City’s class-based policies to diversify its elite Specialized High Schools, this Essay explains that purported support for class-based affirmative action serves as a rhetorical smokescreen for eliminating Brown v. Board of Education’s promise of a racially integrated society. This Essay contends that it is not the ameliorative programs’ race- or class-based means that elicits conservative disapproval, but rather the communities that ultimately stand to benefit from the programs.