Second Circuit Tosses Suit Challenging Connecticut Magnet School Racial Quota

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois School of Law

The Second Circuit ruled yesterday that a nonprofit lacked standing to challenge a Connecticut Department of Education rule that interdistrict magnet schools enroll at least 25 percent non-Black and non-Latinx students. The ruling leaves the rule on the books.

The case, CTPU v. Russell-Tucker, arose when the Commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education issued a memo that required all interdistrict magnet schools to enroll at least 25 percent non-Black and non-Latinx students. The Connecticut Parents Union, a non-profit founded "to protect . . . children's educational rights thus ensuring that neither race, zip-code, nor socio-economic status is a predictor of a child's success," sued, arguing that the memo violated equal protection.

The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that CTPU lacked standing. The court agreed.

The court held that CTPU failed to allege a sufficient harm to its operations. (CTPU did not allege standing on behalf of its members.) The court acknowledged that an organization can establish standing when it "diverts its resources away from its [other] current activities," or otherwise incurs "some perceptible opportunity cost." But it held that CTPU failed to meet that standard here. The court said that CTPU

fail[ed] to identify any restrictions on its ability to perform the core activities--such as meetings, lectures, and general organizing--by which it pursued its mission prior to the [memo]. To the extent CTPU claims that [the memo] triggered an increased demand for parent counseling, CTPU fails to sufficiently plead that any resulting costs were material. Further, even construing the record in CT{U's favor, as we must, it is clear that CTPU incurred costs because it decided to initiate a campaign against [the memo] to advance its own "abstract social interests," thus any costs CPTU incurred from this campaign were not involuntary.

The ruling obviously doesn't prevent another person or organization who has been injured by the memo from suing. But since CTPU's lawsuit, the schools revised the memo to remove any penalties for noncompliance, likely raising other standing challenges for potential plaintiffs.