Despite a 4.2 high school grade-point average, near-perfect SATs, and the fact that he founded a software company while still a high school sophomore, Stanley Zhong was rejected by admissions officers at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara – every University of California campus he applied to. Just 18 at the time, the Palo Alto, California, native shook off the disappointment and immediately earned a prestigious job as a Google programmer. A year later, he hasn’t given up on his dream: he’d still like to go back to school and eventually earn a doctorate in computer science.

To level the path to admissions, he’s suing the University of California system because, he says, race factored into his UC rejections.

Citing violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the California constitution, Zhong’s federal suit claims the UC system intentionally discriminates against Asian-American students in order to achieve racial quotas in undergraduate and graduate admissions.

And while asserting financial loss, emotional distress and reputational damage, he’s not even asking for money (beyond costs) in the suit – just that the UC system follow the law.