Asian engineer spotted by Google at 13 wins first round in bias lawsuit after being rejected by 16 US colleges

A Google software engineer who was rejected by 16 of the 18 U.S. colleges he applied to can press a racial discrimination claim against the University of Washington, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle last month refused to throw out Stanley Zhong's claim that the university discriminated against him as an Asian American applicant, allowing a case filed in February 2025 to move toward the evidence-gathering stage, Fox News Digital reported.Zhong, 19, had applied to 18 colleges as a senior at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, in 2023.He had a 4.42 weighted grade point average, a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, and had launched a free electronic signature service called RabbitSign in his sophomore year that drew recognition from Amazon Web Services.Sixteen turned him down, including the University of Washington, where he had applied to study computer science at its Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.Google hired him as a software engineer that fall, into a role his lawsuit says typically requires a doctorate. The company had approached him for an interview at 13, according to his complaint, then withdrew it on learning he was too young to hire.His suit argues that no merit-based reason explains the rejections and that Asian American applicants are held to higher standards than others. The university says its process is race-neutral.Robart found the claim plausible enough to proceed after examining two planning documents from the Allen School. A five-year diversity plan published in 2021 set a goal of measuring the share of Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native and Hawaiian or Pacific Islander undergraduates and assessing by year five whether it had reached at least 15%, the campus average. A companion plan running through December 2023 carried the same target.Those documents plausibly support Zhong's contention that race is weighed to achieve racial balancing, Robart wrote, adding that whether that happens beneath the surface of admissions decisions is a factual question he cannot resolve at this stage. The order establishes only that the allegations are strong enough to continue, he noted, not that discrimination occurred."The judge found enough factual allegations to support our allegation," Zhong's father, Nan Zhong, told Fox News Digital, saying the ruling opens the door to internal university documents, staff communications and admissions data. A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 13, 2025. Photo by Reuters No law firm would take the case, so the Zhongs are arguing it themselves with artificial intelligence central to drafting the filings, Nan Zhong told ABC7 News in San Francisco.His son's position is unusual because he never enrolled anywhere, and so retains what the father called "evergreen legal standing," unlike plaintiffs who lose the right to sue as they progress through college.The Washington complaint was one of four the family brought in 2025, alongside suits against the University of California system, Michigan and Cornell. Each invokes the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred colleges from considering applicants' race.The University of California system has denied the allegations, saying its admissions practices comply with state and federal bans on race-conscious decisions.The family has founded a nonprofit, Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, and raised money through GoFundMe after spending heavily from savings. Nan Zhong said dozens of Asian American families have contacted him with similar accounts.