Tech Innovator Challenges College Admissions with AI Lawsuit Over Alleged Racial Bias

In Palo Alto, California, a father has taken an unconventional route in his battle against prominent university systems, claiming his son’s college rejections were unjust. Frustrated by the lack of legal representation, he has turned to artificial intelligence as his primary tool in this quest for justice.

The roots of this legal struggle trace back to 2023 when ABC7 News in San Francisco reported on Stanley Zhong, an exceptional Gunn High School student. With an impressive 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect SAT score of 1590, Stanley faced rejection from 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite these setbacks, his talents were soon recognized, leading to his recruitment as a software engineer at Google.

Now, over two years later, Stanley’s father, Nan Zhong, maintains that racial discrimination played a significant role in the college rejection process. In an exclusive interview with ABC7 News anchor Kristen Sze, he shared his family’s ongoing belief in this claim.

Stanley, now 20, has found success and satisfaction in his role at Google. “In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating,” his father proudly noted, emphasizing that this achievement surpasses the performance of most Google engineers.

Despite their son’s career achievements, the Zhong family remains unsettled by the college rejections. They initially spent a year engaging with University of California officials to address their concerns, but their efforts bore little fruit. The pivotal moment occurred when a UC admissions director dismissed their claims of racial discrimination, pointing out that California law prohibits such practices.

“When I got that line, I kept scratching my head,” Zhong said. “They’re saying there cannot be any noncompliance if there’s a law banning it, but we’re exactly accusing them of breaking the law secretly. So that is the point where I realized there’s nothing we can achieve by having a conversation with them.”

Zhong said conversations with state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom also went nowhere, prompting the family to sue the University of California, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University.

He said they struggled to find legal representation. “We’ve been talking to local law firms, national law firms. By my account, we probably talked to dozens of legal organizations and law firms. None of them took it,” Zhong said. With statutes of limitation approaching, he said the family decided to represent themselves.

“Of course, being somebody with no legal experience at all, we naturally turned to AI,” he said. “It turned out to be a boon that we never anticipated to be so effective.”

Zhong said they use multiple AI models simultaneously to analyze legal questions, compare answers and prevent errors. “It’s like having a team of deep lawyers, top lawyers, all working for you,” he said.

He pointed to a recent ruling in the University of Washington case, where a judge rejected the university’s motion to stay the case. Zhong said the decision underscored a challenge in bringing admissions lawsuits: students often lose legal standing once they reach their junior year of college.

“Here, Stanley has a unique advantage. He’s not going to college yet. He may go at any time,” Zhong said. “So, in some ways, he has evergreen legal standing that allows us to bring the lawsuit.”

Zhong said the broader admissions landscape has shifted since Stanley’s rejections, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling banning affirmative action in the Harvard case and increased scrutiny of elite universities. He said the family has spent significant personal funds and continues to pursue the cases because they believe the issues extend beyond their son. They have launched a nonprofit, SWORD, Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, to advance their cause. And they have received some financial support through GoFundMe.

“We think we have a unique advantage, and we don’t want to let that go,” he said.