Plaintiff challenged Defendants' race-neutral admissions policy at secondary schools Boston Latin School, the Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science (collectively referred to as "Boston Exam Schools"), arguing that it discriminated against white and Asian applicants.

According to Plaintiff, Defendants' admissions policy previously focused on applicants’ GPA and performance on a standardized entrance exam. After the pandemic began, the Zip Code Quota Plan was adopted for the 2021-2022 school year, allocating a portion of seats to each Boston zip code based on the percentage of school-aged children living there. Students within each zip code then competed for those seats based on their pre-pandemic GPA. Plaintiff argued this plan acted as a substitute for race and ethnicity, disadvantaging white and Asian applicants while favoring Black and Latine applicants.

On April 15, 2021, the court ruled in favor of Defendants. It determined that Defendants' plan was not a substitute for race and that using socioeconomic and geographic factors was a reasonable approach to promoting diversity. The court also found that Plaintiff failed to show the plan disproportionately harmed white and Asian individuals or that there was any intent to discriminate against white and Asian students when adopting the plan.

On June 22, 2021, after Plaintiff's request for an emergency injunction was denied in the Court of Appeals, Plaintiff asked the district court to revisit its earlier decision allowing the plan to proceed. Plaintiff pointed to newly uncovered text messages reported by a newspaper, claiming they showed racial bias among some committee members who developed the plan. After reviewing the evidence, the district court declined to overturn its decision. The court acknowledged that race may have influenced the plan's creation but found the evidence insufficient to show that white and Asian students were unfairly harmed by it.