SCOTUS To Hear Disparate Impact, At-Home Distilling Ban Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court added to its 2026 docket on Monday two high-profile cases dealing with race and school admissions and a Reconstruction-era federal ban on at-home distilling.

In its latest order list, the high court revealed that it has agreed to take up and hear arguments in Association for Education Fairness (AEF) v. Montgomery County Board of Education, which deals with the subject of disparate impact in school admissions. As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies previously described, “Disparate impact theory posits that a neutrally applied policy or regulation can be technically discriminatory if it affects one group disproportionately compared to another.”

At issue in AEF is a magnet program run by the Maryland-based Montgomery County Public Schools. According to the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing plaintiffs in the litigation, the program offers academically skilled students access to “highly competitive programs at four middle schools — two of which are humanities-driven and two of which focus on STEM instruction.”

After hiring a consulting firm to recommend new “equitable” admissions standards to “fix a perceived racial imbalance at magnet schools,” MCPS purportedly adopted new rules that challengers allege have “effectively den[ied] admission to the highest-scoring Asian American children.” The school district, PLF said, “cannot unfairly target one racial group to achieve their preferred racial balance.”

In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court has asked parties to file briefs addressing the question of whether plaintiffs “challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool.”

The high court’s decision to take up the case comes several years after its Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) ruling, in which the majority found affirmative action in higher education to be unconstitutional. Such policies, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, [] lack meaningful end points,” and “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Meanwhile, in Department of Justice v. McNutt, the Supreme Court will weigh a Reconstruction-era federal prohibition on Americans’ ability to distill alcohol at their homes. The challenge was originally brought by several citizens and a pro-distilling organization who “had experience with lawful alcohol production for fuel or other beverages [and] expressed clear intent to distill spirits for personal consumption at or near their residences,” according to Justia.

The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal prohibition on at-home distilling, as specified under the contested law, “is necessary and proper for carrying into execution Congress’s enumerated power to lay and collect taxes.”

Neither AEF nor McNutt has been scheduled for oral argument as of this article’s publication.