WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider reviving a lawsuit against a Maryland county's lottery admissions policy for four elite public middle schools that some parents claim unlawfully discriminates ​against Asian American applicants.

Delving again into the contentious issue of race in student admissions, the justices took up an appeal by a coalition of parents of a lower court's decision rejecting their claim that Montgomery County's policy violates the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection ‌under the law.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case and rule by the end of June.

The parents sued to challenge the entrance policies for the county's academically rigorous "magnet" schools, which provide enrichment programs ⁠in math and science, or the humanities, for high-achieving students in sixth through ​eighth grades. They include Takoma Park Middle School in Silver Spring and ⁠Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Germantown.

The case represents the latest legal attack on entrance policies at certain highly selective public schools that challengers critique for ‌continuing to pursue "racial balancing" with the aim ‌of boosting diversity.

The Supreme Court issued a landmark 2023 ruling that rejected race-conscious college and university admissions policies long used to raise ⁠the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on campuses.

Plaintiffs in these new legal challenges ⁠claim that admissions to these prestigious programs, though race-neutral on the surface, use proxies such as socioeconomic status to achieve the same unlawful, race-based result in pursuit of diversity.

The legal challenges coincide with President Donald Trump's policies, implemented since he returned to office last year, against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in education, as well as in the U.S. government and military, and in private companies.

At issue in the Maryland case is whether lower courts may dismiss claims of intentional racial discrimination if the policy has not disproportionately harmed that racial group, in this instance Asian American students.

Montgomery ‌County is a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC.