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On February 2, 2026, in Sargent v. School District of Philadelphia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment for the School District of Philadelphia, which faced challenges to the district’s admissions policies for its most selective high schools. The court ruled that even though the district’s policy was facially race-neutral in that it favored students who lived in some zip codes over others, a factfinder could find that the use of zip codes might be an unlawful proxy for race because there was evidence from which a factfinder could find that the policy had the purpose and impact of increasing the percentage of students from certain races at the expense of others.