Last Updated: February 21, 2024, 00:00 IST
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place the admissions coverage at an elite public highschool in Virginia that some mother and father claimed discriminates in opposition to extremely certified Asian Americans.
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place the admissions coverage at an elite public highschool in Virginia that some mother and father claimed discriminates in opposition to extremely certified Asian Americans.
The court docket’s order, over the dissent of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, ended a authorized problem to a coverage that was overhauled in 2020 to extend range, with out taking race under consideration.
A panel of the federal appeals court docket in Richmond had earlier upheld the constitutionality of the admissions coverage on the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a college regularly cited among the many greatest within the nation.
The excessive court docket’s consideration of the case adopted its determination in June that struck down admissions insurance policies at faculties and universities that took account of the race of candidates.
The Fairfax County School Board overhauled the Thomas Jefferson admissions course of in 2020, scrapping a standardized check. The new coverage provides weight in favor of candidates who’re economically deprived or nonetheless studying English, nevertheless it doesn’t take race under consideration.
The impact within the first freshman class admitted beneath it was to extend the share of Black college students from 1% to 7% and Hispanic college students from 3% to 11%. Both teams have been tremendously underrepresented for many years. Asian American illustration decreased from 73% to 54%.
For the present faculty yr, Black and Hispanic college students made up 6.7% and 6%, respectively, of these supplied admission, the varsity board stated. Asian Americans represented 61.6% of these admitted, the board stated.
’We have lengthy believed that the brand new admissions course of is each constitutional and in one of the best curiosity of all of our college students. It ensures that each one certified college students from all neighborhoods in Fairfax County have a good shot at attending this distinctive highschool,” stated Karl Frisch, Fairfax County School Board chair.
In 2022, a federal choose discovered the varsity board engaged in impermissible “racial balancing” when it overhauled admissions. The appeals court docket reversed that ruling.
Alito wrote that the district court docket received it proper. The appeals court docket primarily dominated that “intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe,” he wrote.
The mother and father who challenged the coverage say it discriminates in opposition to Asian American candidates who would have been granted admission if tutorial advantage have been the only standards, and that efforts to extend Black and Hispanic illustration essentially come on the expense of Asian Americans.
“The Supreme Court missed an important opportunity to end race-based discrimination in K-12 admissions,” stated Pacific Legal Foundation senior lawyer Joshua Thompson, who represents the mother and father who challenged.
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