Boston’s elite exam schools are among the best public high schools in the country. Until recently, admission was based solely on academic achievement. But over the past five years, the merit-based system that helped these schools and students thrive has shifted toward one that judges students not on their performance, but on their race. 

PLF first challenged Boston Public Schools’ (BPS) thinly veiled race-based admissions reforms in 2021—on behalf of the Boston Parents Coalition—but after a multi-year fight through lower courts, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2024. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, condemned Boston's policy in a dissent from denial and called out the judiciary’s failure to stop it: “a glaring constitutional error that threatens to perpetuate race-based affirmative action in defiance of Students for Fair Admissions.” 

Now—with new facts and clear discriminatory intent—we’re going back to Boston in a new challenge to BPS’ reimagined “tier-based” admissions system. In her latest blog post, PLF’s Brittany Hunter connects the dots between ongoing efforts to combat discrimination by proxy in Boston, Virginia, and New York.

In 2023, with PLF’s help, David Welch successfully challenged a newly enacted Rhode Island law that moved the public beach boundary landward—effectively stripping private land from every coastal property owner in the state without compensation.  

Now, we’ve teamed up with David once again—this time to challenge an even uglier, more oppressive, zombie-like resurrection of the statute he’s already defeated. Only this time, it has been reborn under the banner of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

Last week, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed HB 2089, a law banning home equity theft. PLF state policy director Jim Manley applauded the move, calling it “best-in-the-nation reform that protects all Oregonians from having their home equity seized by the government if they fall behind on their taxes.”

Racial preferences and quotas for public service are never a good idea: They serve only to divide and single people out for favor or disfavor based on personal characteristics they cannot control. Worse still, such quotas violate the American promise of equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.  

Fortunately, the governors of South Carolina, Montana, Tennessee, and Arkansas signed bills this spring to eliminate racial quotas from state boards and commissions. But the work is far from done. Lawsuits challenging similar race-based preferences and quotas for public board service are ongoing in Alabama, Louisiana, Minnesota, and West Virginia. Meanwhile, many other states still have discriminatory laws on the books.

In 1992, the Illinois General Assembly created the Minority Teachers of Illinois (MTI) Scholarship Program to ease the financial burden for aspiring teachers and encourage more students to enter the profession. But for more than 30 years, the program has suffered a serious limitation: Only members of preferred minority groups are eligible for the scholarship. 

Today, the state faces a significant teacher shortage, and recent polling shows that 60% of Illinois teachers and support staff are considering leaving the profession. PLF attorneys Erin Wilcox and Samantha Romero argue that one obvious step toward addressing these challenges is ending the unconstitutional race-based restrictions in the MTI scholarship program.

Last Friday, PLF attorneys filed a petition for rulemaking urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow individuals targeted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to transfer their cases from FINRA’s in-house tribunals to federal district court, as the Constitution demands. 

“FINRA’s in-house proceedings sidestep the Constitution’s guarantees of due process, jury trials, and the independent judiciary,” said PLF attorney Adi Dynar. “[Our] petition offers a simple solution: Give enforcement targets the option to have their day in court before a federal judge and jury where appropriate.”