High School Poses New Race and Admissions Challenge for Justices

The US Supreme Court is being asked to hear a fight over the admissions policy at an elite Virginia high school that a coalition of parents and students in the district say unconstitutionally discriminates against Asian American applicants.

It appears to be the first case to test the bounds of the court’s decision in June to effectively end the use of race as a factor in college admissions. While the case is centered on admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, it challenges the kind of race-neutral policy colleges and universities may choose to adopt following the high court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), the public interest group that’s representing the coalition, says the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was wrong to uphold the Fairfax County School Board’s “holistic” evaluation process for admissions at the Alexandria-based school known as TJ.

The policy, adopted in 2020, guarantees admission to 1.5% of eighth graders at each middle school in the district and leaves about 100 seats open to other applicants. Students are evaluated based on their GPA and get bonus points if they’re eligible for free or reduced lunch, or attend a middle school that traditionally doesn’t see many students admitted to TJ.

In its petition to the court, PLF said the policy reduced the raw number and the proportion of Asian American students admitted to the school that’s focused on math, science, and technology.

Though TJ doesn’t ask applicants to provide their race, “the school board used a process that uses racial proxies to achieve the same result as if they were considering race,” said Erin Wilcox, an attorney at PLF.

“It’s really a logical follow-up to the Students for Fair Admissions decision,” she said, citing the ruling on affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. “This is what colleges and universities are going to pivot to now that they can’t consider race overtly.”

The Fairfax County School Board didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Supreme Court denied the coalition’s request in April 2022 to stay a Fourth Circuit order that had allowed the policy to remain in place while it was being challenged. The appeals in May said the coalition couldn’t establish that the policy was adopted with discriminatory intent and ruled for the school board.

PLF argues the Fourth Circuit’s ruling undermines the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which protects an individual right to be free from racial discrimination.

The legal group has cases pending in the Fourth, Second and First Circuits challenging race-neutral policies at middle magnet schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, and specialized high schools in Boston and New York City, respectively.

The case is Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, U.S., cert. petition.