{"id":48358,"date":"2026-04-28T23:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T23:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/48358\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T23:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T23:28:17","slug":"mamdani-and-city-leaders-accused-of-racially-engineering-elite-public-high-schools-to-keep-asian-americans-out-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/48358\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani and city leaders accused of \u2018racially engineering\u2019 elite public high schools to keep Asian-Americans out: Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/p>\n

An image collage containing 2 images, Image 1 shows Yi Fang, who is suing NYC over specialized high schools, sits on a park bench, Image 2 shows Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaking at a podium with <\/p>\n

Zohran Mamdani and city Democrat leaders stand accused of \u201cracially engineering\u201d New York City\u2019s elite public high schools, according to a Brooklyn mom who last week brought a federal lawsuit <\/a>against the mayor and the Department of Education.<\/p>\n

Yi Fang Chen, 45, is challenging the admissions process for the city\u2019s nine Specialized High Schools (SHS) after her eldest son was denied admission to Stuyvesant High School, despite scoring in the top five percent on the admissions exam, which he took in November.<\/p>\n

Some 26,000 students take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test each year, competing for around 5,000 places.<\/p>\n

\"Brooklyn<\/p>\n

Brooklyn mom Yi Fang Chen is suing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over what she says is discrimination against her son who was denied entry to Stuyvesant High School. Brian Zak\/NY Post<\/p>\n

Chen told The Post her 13-year-old son scored\u00a0558\u00a0in the rigorous exam and Stuyvesant requires a score of\u00a0561, and he was rejected. Her lawsuit challenges revisions to the admissions for the 2019 school year, which allocate 20 percent of all available seats at SHS schools for students who specifically got lower test scores but meet other criteria, such as coming from a lower-income background.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting in 2020, the City began reserving 20 percent of its SHS seats for a separate admissions pathway \u2014 the Discovery program \u2014 that excludes students based on criteria the City purposefully selected to change the racial composition of those schools,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City adopted and continues to enforce that policy in an effort to reduce the number of Asian-American students and increase the number of black and Hispanic students admitted to the SHSs.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny student who scored a 495 or above is not eligible for the Discovery program,\u201d states the NYC\u00a0public school website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chen told The Post students who scored up to 100 points below her son will be granted admission to Stuyvesant instead. \u201cIt\u2019s very upsetting,\u201d the data scientist and mother of three added.<\/p>\n

\"Zohran<\/p>\n

Zohran Mamdani, a graduate of the elite Bronx High School of Science, is continuing to discriminate against Asian American students, a federal law suit says. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

The criteria were \u201cdeliberately designed\u201d to reduce Asian American enrollment, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, <\/a>a nonprofit that filed the suit on her behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City inverted the purpose of the Discovery Program by making certain disadvantaged kids categorically ineligible for Discovery through middle-school screens calculated to exclude heavily Asian-American schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo rather than expand opportunity for disadvantaged students generally, the City rewrote the program in an effort to engineer a different racial result,\u201d a representative for the foundation told The Post.<\/p>\n

The Discovery program was started long before Mamdani became mayor this year. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio had expanded it, with the explicit intent of admitting more black and Hispanic students.<\/p>\n

To qualify, students must attend and be recommended by a \u201chigh-poverty public school,\u201d and come from a family who receive welfare or food stamps, be in foster care, or classed as an \u201cEnglish language learner,\u201d according to the schools department.<\/p>\n

\"Yi<\/p>\n

Yi Fang Chen said she would continue to fight for her son and other Asian-American students in New York City. Brian Zak\/NY Post<\/p>\n

The Pacific Legal Foundation says the change in the rules violates the federal Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Department of Education did not respond to The Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Chen arrived in the US in 1996 as a teenager from China with limited English skills. She eventually earned a PhD in statistics from Stanford University, says she filed the lawsuit in order to help hundreds of other students and parents stuck in the same predicament.<\/p>\n

She said she wanted to ensure that her other two children \u2014 a son and a daughter \u2014 would not face the same discrimination.<\/p>\n

\u201cYi Fang Chen\u2026has lived and worked in New York City for decades and raised her family with the expectation that merit \u2014 not race \u2014 would determine their opportunities in public education,\u201d says the lawsuit, which also names the city\u2019s Department of Education Chancellor, Kamar Samuels, as a defendant.<\/p>\n

\"Stuyvesant<\/p>\n

Stuyvesant High School is one of nine high-performing Specialized High Schools in New York City. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

Chen was also a plaintiff <\/a>in a similar suit against the city and de Blasio in 2018. The case was dismissed in 2022, but that decision was reversed in 2024 by the Second Circuit Court, which said the Plaintiffs had \u201cset forth evidence of Asian-American students who have suffered a discriminatory effect from the new policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chen said that she consulted with her son before she filed the second lawsuit, and said that he understood what she was doing and supported it.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of outcome, I have to do this because it\u2019s not just my son but each year there are hundreds of students who are victims of racial discrimination,\u201d said Chen. \u201cI don\u2019t understand Mamdani. He went to Bronx Science, and he benefited from that experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Brooklyn mom is suing Department of Education Chancellor Kamar Samuels, alleging discrimination against Asian-Americans at New York\u2019s elite public high schools. Stephen Yang for the NY Post<\/p>\n

The Bronx High School of Science is one of the SHSs in the city.<\/p>\n

Chen said she would continue to fight for as long as it takes to change the policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a mother, I do what I think is the right thing to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An image collage containing 2 images, Image 1 shows Yi Fang, who is suing NYC over specialized high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[29011,30163,560,30164,30161,30160,30162,553],"class_list":{"0":"post-48358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zohran-mamdani","8":"tag-department-of-education","9":"tag-discovery-program","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-public-high-schools","12":"tag-specialized-high-schools","13":"tag-stuyvesant-high-school","14":"tag-yi-fang-chen","15":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116484932348057675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}