High school did not discriminate against Asian American students, court ruling
Why it matters: The case could be a test of a “race neutral” admissions policy.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions, but the Thomas Jefferson case could be groundbreaking.
The new high school admissions criterion never even mentions race, but the lawsuit challenges the use of race-neutral “proxies.”
“They’re using race proxies, in our view, to get a racial result,” said Joshua P. Thompson, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group that helps parents, many of them Asian-American, with their court case.
The high school applauded the decision. “We firmly believe that this admissions plan is fair and gives qualified applicants at every high school a fair chance at a place at TJ,” said John Foster, divisional advisor for the Fairfax County Public Schools.
Background: Asian-American parents had objected to the new admissions strategy.
In late 2020, officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, became concerned about the negligible number of black and Hispanic students at the school and changed admission standards at Thomas Jefferson High School, which draws students from across the county.
As a result, the percentage of black students grew from 1 percent of the class to 7 percent, while the number of Asian-American students fell from 73 percent to 54 percent, the lowest share in years.
A group of parents, many of them Asian-American, objected to the new plan and initiated it Coalition for TJ. The coalition has filed a lawsuit with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has filed similar lawsuits in New York and Montgomery County, Md.
What’s Next: Potential end to efforts to remedy perceived racial disparities.
The ruling was widely anticipated and the case is now likely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in the TJ case would be the next step in ending any consideration of race — in this case, using proxies like zip codes or income — to increase racial equality through education and other public programs.
In an upcoming paper in the Stanford Law Review, Sonja B. Starr, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago, writes that the plaintiffs are “laying the groundwork for a much larger legal transformation” that could undermine any public policy effort to close racial disparities. prohibit .
Ms Starr predicted in an interview that the TJ case could eventually reverberate in areas beyond education, such as fair housing, environmental permits and social welfare policies.
Campbell Robertson reporting contributed. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.