Poly High topped Riverside’s Notre Dame High last week to take the championship title in the 43rd annual Riverside County Mock Trial Competition.

The Poly High team will go on to the state meet, slated for March 14- 16 in Los Angeles.

“Congratulations to the student competitors … who all have a very bright future ahead of them — whether that is in the legal field, in higher education, or in their professional pursuits,” county Superintendent of Schools Edwin Gomez said. “I look forward to seeing Poly High School once again represent Riverside County at the state competition.”

Notre Dame High was awarded the second place trophy, while Murrieta Valley High and Temecula High shared third prize after the semifinal and final rounds concluded on Tuesday.

The Office of Education, in partnership with the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Riverside County Bar Association and the Superior Court, sponsor the competitions annually. They generally draw more than 400 participants. The county began holding student-level mock trials in 1983. More than 14,000 youths have participated since then, organizers said.

This year’s contest challenged students to successfully argue the fictitious case of People v. Gold, involving an alleged kidnapping amid a heated local political race in the make-believe community of Emerald Bend, California. The defendant, Logan Gold, was accused of abducting his wife’s rival candidate in a city council election to prevent the victim from appearing for a scheduled debate.

Students were tasked with analyzing forensic evidence, admissibility of statements, possible due process infringements and other matters during the trials.

Teams consisting of eight to 25 students played the parts of deputy district attorneys, defense attorneys, bailiffs, witnesses, clerks and investigators. Contestants were given an allotted time, generally four to six minutes, at each stage of a proceeding, including opening statements, closing arguments and cross-examinations.

Practicing attorneys and judges assessed students’ performance, awarding points in accordance with criteria established for the contest.

Students from public and private high schools are permitted to take part.

Poly High also won the county’s 2024 contest. Its teams consistently make it into the semifinals.

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The new class is the first admitted after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 barred colleges and universities from considering race in admissions resulting from a pair of cases filed against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The new Harvard Law data is not broken down by race, meaning it does not reflect possible shifts between different minority groups such as Asian, Black and Hispanic students.

The Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, prompted concern within the legal industry that longstanding efforts to bolster attorney diversity would falter.

Plaintiffs in the cases argued that considering race in admissions was discriminatory against white and Asian American applicants.

This year’s 8-perentage-point decline in students of color at Harvard Law equates to about 45 fewer non-white first-year students out of a class of 560 at the elite law school. At 43%, the proportion of students of color is Harvard’s lowest since 2017. That figure reached a high of 56% in 2021, school data shows.

A Harvard Law spokesperson did not immediately provide comment on the decline Thursday.

Harvard University last week reported that the percentage of Black students in its freshman class dropped by more than a fifth. That class is 14% Black, compared with 18% last year, Harvard said, while the share of Hispanic students ticked up slightly from 14% to 16%.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s incoming freshman class this year dropped to 16% Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander students compared with 31% in previous years, which officials attributed to the affirmative action ban.

Half of the law schools ranked in the top 14 by U.S. News & World Report have disclosed some diversity figures, with five saying that their proportion of students of color either held steady or increased over last year.

Along with Harvard Law, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law is the only other top-14 law school to thus far report a year-over-year decline—falling to 50% students of color from 57% last year. A Berkeley Law spokesperson said the California school, which has been under a state-imposed affirmative action ban since 1996, did not change its admissions process and that the makeup of its class fluctuates every year.

The American Bar Association will release detailed, school-specific enrollment data broken down by race in December.

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