WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a prominent Virginia high school to temporarily continue using an admissions policy that diversifies its student body despite objections from some parents who said the policy’s racial effects violate the Constitution.
Against the backdrop of the murder of George Floyd in 2020the Fairfax County School Board changed its admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, which is often ranked as one of the best high schools in the nation but where Black and Hispanic students make up a small portion of the student body.
The new policy requires Thomas Jefferson to accept 1.5% of the eighth-grade class at each of the district’s middle schools. The plaintiffs in the case asserted that it had the effect of increasing the number of Black students but “had a substantial adverse impact on Asian American students…in order to achieve its desired racial balance.”
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The school board countered that the policy was race-neutral because it set no racial targets and the race of applicants is not known to admissions officials.
The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to block the school’s policy temporarily while the case continued to be considered in lower courts. The high court declined to do so on Monday, though it offered no explanation for its decision. Three conservative associate justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, said they would have blocked the policy for now.
The decision dealt only with whether to put a district court’s decision against the school on hold. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit temporarily blocked the district court’s opinion and the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court.
The underlying merits of the school’s policy will continue to be litigated.
The case arrived on the Supreme Court emergency docket at a time when the justices are also considering admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina – though the policies are different. Harvard and North Carolina acknowledge considering race in admissions but say it is one of several factors – an approach that is consistent with the current legal standard permitting some affirmative action policies under longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
US District Judge Claude Hilton ruled in February that impermissible “racial balancing” was at the core of the new admissions policy at the selective school. Hilton also turned down a request from the school system to delay implementation of his ruling, but a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit said the school board had met the legal requirements for a suspension of Hilton’s order while its appeal is pending.
The school’s current freshman class, which was admitted under the new policy, saw a significantly different racial makeup than in the past. Black students increased from 1% of the student body to 7%, according to court records. Hispanic representation increased from 3% to 11%. Asian American representation decreased from 73% to 54%.
Contributing: Associated Press
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism