Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District was a 1994 lawsuit by the Asian American Legal Foundation challenging the use of racial quotas limiting the enrollment of Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

s by the San Francisco Unified School District

San Francisco Unified School District

San Francisco Unified School District , established in 1851, is the only public school district within the City and County of San Francisco, and the first in the state of California...

. As a result of the case, San Francisco Unified school district switched to a system using a "diversity index" that excluded race as an alternative to the quota system.

Ten years later

The Ho case ended express use of race in San Francisco public school assignment. The parties to the original desegregation agreement (NAACP v. SFUSD) failed to respond to the challenge to justify the use of race as a factor in admissions. The Ho case was not an adjudication of the merits. The school district was not prepared to make its case and, hence, settled. In the new Consent Decree, the Diversity Index did not use race. Substitutes for race, such as language of the mother and income were used. Nevertheless, the subjective purpose of using a Diversity Index was racial, as the success or failure of the Diversity Index is always discussed in terms of its racial impact. The Diversity Index can be argued to be discriminatory as applied. This notion is usually a matter of interpretation levied to allow one racial group access to public resources while excluding other racial groups.