The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a case brought by a former student at a prestigious Washington, DC, prep school who alleged discrimination affected her chances for college admission.
Dayo Adetu and her parents, Titilayo and Nike Adetu, say that the private Sidwell Friends School -- the elite school attended by a who's who of Beltway families, including presidential daughters Sasha and Malia Obama and Chelsea Clinton as well as former Vice President Joe Biden's granddaughter Maisy -- breached a settlement with the family after it allegedly discriminated against Adetu, an African-American, in the grades she received while in high school and then in materials Sidwell submitted as she applied to colleges.
"Sidwell has long been perceived as a 'feeder-school' to Ivy League institutions and other top universities," the Adetus wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court. Adetu, however, was not immediately accepted by any university.
The appeal was rejected without comment.
During her initial first round of applications -- when she applied to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Duke, Johns Hopkins, CalTech, MIT, the University of Virginia, McGill and Spelman -- Adetu "was the only student in her graduating class of 126 students who did not receive unconditional acceptance from any educational institution to which she applied," according to the Supreme Court petition.
Adetu ultimately attended the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 after applying to colleges again, according to the complaint, and indicated on social media that she graduated last month.
The family sought review of a decision by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in January that said the Adetus' claim was rightly rejected by a lower court because they had failed to show "any adverse action taken by Sidwell" and were only claiming emotional damages for an alleged breach of an earlier mediated settlement.
