Yi Fang Chen v. Zohran Mamdani, et al.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), together with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), and LatinoJustice PRLDEF intervened in the federal lawsuit Yi Fang Chen v. Zohran Mamdani on behalf of Teens Take Charge – a public-school student led organization, Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF), and a group of racially and ethnically diverse public school students and their families.

The Chen lawsuit challenges the expansion of a program designed to remove barriers to access to the Specialized High Schools, a group of selective public schools often considered to be the most desirable in the City. The Discovery Program enables high-achieving students who attend middle schools with high economic need to earn admission to the Specialized High Schools after completing a summer preparation session.

The civil rights organizations intervened on behalf of students, parents and community groups to help defend the expansion of the Discovery Program as a modest, but important, step towards remedying longstanding unfair barriers in the City’s public schools. Since then, the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction which was denied by the trial court. An appeal of that denial is pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.