Wendy Berkelman, Through Pearl Berkelman, Her Next Friend and Natural Guardian v. San Francisco Unified School District

The district court denied injunctive and other relief in this civil rights action challenging the San Franciseo Unified School District’s standards for admitting students to Lowell High School. Appellants, claiming to represent a class of students denied admission, have appealed. •

Lowell High School is an academic, or college-preparatory, public high school which accepts each year those applicants for admission whose prior academic achievement places them within approximately the top 15 per cent of the junior-high-sehool graduates in the district.

The issues on appeal, phrased broadly, are: (1) whether a school district may admit students to a preferred high school on the basis of past academic achievement if the percentage of black, Spanish-American, and low-income students who qualify for admission is substantially disproportionate to the percentage of black, Spanish-American, and low-income students in the school dis trict at large; (2) whether a school district, in order to maintain equal numbers of boys and girls in the school, may apply higher admission requirements to girls than to boys.

I

The district operates eleven high schools. Seven are “comprehensive” high…