Posted on 04/10/2026 1:52:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A Palo Alto father who has filed multiple lawsuits against major university systems over his son's college rejections says artificial intelligence has become the key to pursuing the cases after no law firm agreed to represent them.
The legal fight stems from a 2023 ABC7 News story about Stanley Zhong, then an 18-year-old Gunn High School student with a 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect 1590 SAT score who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite the rejections, he was later hired as a software engineer at Google.
Two and a half years later, his father, Nan Zhong, says the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions. He appeared on ABC7 News at 3 p.m. and spoke exclusively with anchor Kristen Sze.
Zhong said Stanley, now 21, is happy and doing well in his job at Google. "In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating, which is higher than majority of the Google engineers," he said.
Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley's rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.
"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.
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Guess by now that Zhong is realizing that he is just peeing into the wind trying to talk to Newsom. He might as well just move to NYC & maybe get the same results.
Yeah! Sic the bastards!
A case rejected by all contacted lawyers indicates that they don’t see any chance of a payday.
Interesting story. Thanks for posting.
“...the UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.”
Murder, robbery, extortion, bribery, fraud are all against the law, too.
Too bad his last name is not Obangidoogoo.
“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.”
YES! This is exactly what liberals say and do. Liberals believe anything is justified simply by what they do and say, because, after all, all liberals believe they are god and all laws do not apply to them—only to you.
Meanwhile, this recent graduate is becoming widely known in the local tech community as someone prone to litigation if he doesn’t get his way. You better believe Human Resources and Personnel at Google are wary of him and all his ‘baggage’.
Such discrimination still does happen, most especially to White Males, known conservatives and/or Asians, but most victims of it would have diverted their energies into attempts to start their own businesses by now.
What are they not telling us?
Special Needs? Campaigned for Trump? Asian student quota? Requires financial aid?
If the Top Eight USA science and engineering schools said NO, that might not be uncommon.
16 said NO?
More information needed...
Yeah, and I told the judge in traffic court there’s no way I was speeding, because it’s against the law.
Asian student quota
Or they don't dare antagonize very large entities while defending the rights of a small individual client with a "one-and-done" case.
I've seen professional scenarios where the aggrieved had to go wayyyy out of the region to find someone willing to take on big players. The aggrieved could win, often by a slam dunk, but the nearby professionals refused to aid them because it meant those professionals would never get work again, either directly or by referral.
It's not this payday they're worried about; it's all their future ones.
Yep. If UCB were forced to do use blind admissions based on merit and achievement there’d be nothing but Chinese there. (Not using the weasel word “Asian”)
Too bad his last name is not Obangidoogoo.
As he was getting ready to graduate from our K-8 school, I asked him about his plans. Of course he saw college in his future. I asked him what race he’d tick off on his college applications, he looked at me as if I were crazy, “Black, of course”. One of his choices virtually guaranteed admission while the other would stand in his way.
This was near the turn of this century, so this has been going on for quite some time.
Exactly, it’s a bizarre claim to make. How can a violation of the law be happening if it’s against the law?
Wow...if only it were true, we just legislate actions to be criminal and they’ll all stop happening....right?
Unreal.
That is not the only consideration. It may be that the attorneys have relationships with the schools as clients or other that would cause them to have conflicts. They may be the source of getting new hires. In addition, they may see the universities as possible future work.
Well, just how ‘woke’ do you think these institutions are at this point?
They’re not giving up on Affirmative Action and DEI because they’ve been ruled against - if fact, they’ll double down because they’re the ones that are “fighting the good fight”. They’re on the “right side of history” and “the end justifies the means by any means necessary”. They’ll remove language, use different words, etc., but if anyone thinks they’ll consider themselves to be actually in the wrong, they’re woefully naive.
They’re too arrogant to believe anyone knows better than they do. While there may be more to this it doesn’t surprise me.
Lawyers take note. A.I. is extremely good at language. Law is all language. So long as you verify the output is not a ‘hallucination’, solid in its arguments, I’d use it in an instance like this without hesitation.
I’ve used A.I. to draft documents, at least to outline my intent - then sent to actual lawyers for review and polish. They comment that it “looks very AI”. Sure - but they don’t say it is WRONG or BAD. It also feels like they’re trying very hard to prove they still add value.
...not saying they don’t - but if you can’t get one to represent you, you can still do a lot of damage without one. Imagine the $$$/hr you can get a university to spend on actual lawyers while you’re using A.I.?
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