The United States Supreme Court has declined the opportunity to rule on a race-based admissions case involving an elite high school in Virginia.
A group of parents, known as the Coalition for TJ, appealed to the nation’s highest court to intervene after Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology released a new admissions policy. The plaintiffs believe the policy discriminates against Asian Americans.
The parents initially appealed to the Supreme Court in August, approximately two months after the court struck down the practice of affirmative action in college and university admissions. The Supreme Court found that weighing an applicant’s race during the admissions process was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the Coalition for TJ, contends that the precedent set by the court’s ruling means “that the Constitution bans discrimination based on race, full stop.”
“TJ's admission overhaul tried to hide its discriminatory purpose behind a patina of race-neutrality,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Joshua Thompson to Fox News. “But the school's proxy discrimination clearly violated Chief Justice Robert's warning against indirect discrimination.”
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is located in Arlington, Virginia and has a reputation as a feeder school for Ivy League universities. Fairfax County students must undergo standardized testing and families pay roughly $100 per application.
In response to concerns about differences in admissions rates among racial groups that erupted in the summer of 2020, the school moved to implement geographic quotas, weigh income as a factor, and evaluate applicants based on GPA as well as written assessment and experiences.
“The new scheme, among other changes, boosts applicants whose families qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, removes the application fee and allocates seats for each middle school’s highest-evaluated applicants,” reports The Hill.
The new system resulted in a decline in the number of Asian students who were admitted to the desirable high school. As of August, the school had also dropped in national rankings after years of dominating the list produced by U.S. News & World Report. It was still considered the nation’s top magnet school.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have offered a public dissent and have said the court should hear the Coalition for TJ’s case.
“The Court’s willingness to swallow the aberrant decision below is hard to understand. We should wipe the decision off the books,” said Alito.
On Feb. 2, the court rejected an emergency petition filed by Students for Fair Admissions – the group behind the two cases involved in the June affirmative action decision – seeking to have race-based admissions policies be blocked at the United States Military Academy.
The court’s earlier decision had not applied to the country’s military academies, which are under the purview of the Department of Defense. The Biden administration has argued the military has a “compelling interest” in ensuring racial diversity among cadets.
