Hobson v. Hansen (1967), which addressed the classification of students for standardized tests (it was found to be bias and unconstitutional).

In 1967, Civil rights activist Julius Hobson filed a class action lawsuit in federal trial court against the Board of Education of the District of Columbia and its superintendent, Carl Hansen. The suit alleged that low-income and Black students were denied equal educational opportunity as result of the district’s discriminatory practices. Included among the challenged practices was the institution of a rigid system that assigned students to three or four homogeneous ability groups, or tracks.

Once assigned, students had virtually no opportunity to switch tracks. Students in the lowest tracks received a substantially different and lesser education geared toward attaining lower-paying, blue-collar jobs, while honors track students prepared for college. Low-income and Black students were disproportionately represented in the lowest track. Students were tracked on the basis of the results of a single measure: a standardized aptitude test administered in early elementary school.

Circuit Judge Skelly Wright found that the tests were not actually measuring the ability of children because these were biased in such a way that poor, black children would inevitably earn lower scores and, as a result, lower track placements. As consequence, children were being assigned to tracks based not on ability, but on social status. Wright concluded that this was discriminatory under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, because the lower-track classes provided less educational opportunity.