Ho ex rel. Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, 147 F.3d 854 (9th Cir. 1998)

The Ho case is an early example of APA plaintiffs alleging that an admissions system originally established to desegregate schools imposes discriminatory caps on APA admissions, at least to highly selective elite institutions. SF adopted a desegregation policy in 1971, which was challenged in a 1979 lawsuit by the NAACP as inadequate. That suit was settled with a consent decree in 1983, which set up the system challenged by Ho.  

Although eclipsed by subsequent cases (and certainly SFAA), a skim of the trial court and Ninth Circuit decisions on plaintiffs' summary judgment and mandamus motions provides a glimpse into the evidence and multiracial context of such cases. In a settlement before trial, the school district could no longer use race as a primary admissions factor nor require families to divulge race. The district would also lose the $37 million in annual federal funding that the federal government had been providing to effectuate the 1983 consent decree. 

One of the centerpieces of contention in Ho was Lowell High School. In 2023-24, its student body is 56% female and 44% male. The racial demographics of the student body are (percents in the parentheticals are the 2022 Census numbers for San Francisco for rough comparison):

Asian 55% (37%)

White 17.7% (38%)

Hispanic 14.1% (16%)

Multiracial 10.7% (5%)

African American 1.9% (6%)

Pacific Islander 0.4% (0.5%)

Native American 0.2% (0.8%)

International 0%

Unknown 0%.