Supreme Court Allows Selective High School Diversity Policy (1)

A divided U.S. Supreme Court let a selective Northern Virginia public school keep using an admissions policy adopted to add more racial and socioeconomic diversity to its student body.

The justices refused Monday to block Thomas Jefferson High School’s year-old policy, challenged by a community group as discriminating against Asian-American applicants. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Neither they nor the court as a whole gave any explanation.

The case tested what steps schools and universities can take to ensure racial diversity in their classrooms. The Fairfax County School Board said it is using race-neutral methods to foster diversity -- something the Supreme Court had previously indicated was constitutional.

The clash is a prelude to a high-stakes showdown in the Supreme Court’s next term, when it will use cases involving Harvard College and the University of North Carolina to consider barring universities from using race as an admissions factor.

The Virginia order came as part of the court’s emergency proceedings, which critics have dubbed the “shadow docket” in part because the justices often don’t explain their reasoning. The order applies while the litigation goes forward.

The dispute centers on December 2020 changes designed to bring more racial, socioeconomic and geographic diversity to Thomas Jefferson, an Alexandria, Virginia, school that offers an advanced curriculum focused on science, math and technology.

The new policy guarantees slots for 1.5% of the eighth-grade class in each participating middle school. Remaining applicants compete for 100 other seats under a system that gives points for attendance at underrepresented middle schools.

‘Racial Balancing’

The challengers, known the Coalition for TJ, said the changes were aimed at reducing Asian-Americans at the school and achieving “racial balancing,” which the court has said is unconstitutional. The group said the percentage of Asian-Americans in the admitted class fell from 73% to 54% in the policy’s first year.

“Given the same class of applicants to TJ,” the group argued, “the only way to increase the proportion of Black and Hispanic students admitted is to change the criteria in a way that makes it disproportionately harder for Asian-American students to get in.”

The group’s members include two families with children eligible for admission this year. The school is often ranked among the nation’s top public high schools in yearly lists by U.S. News & World Report.

The school board said Asian-Americans are still accepted at higher rates than other applicants. The board said its program is akin to the University of Texas’s “top 10%” plan, which relies on high school class rank for most admissions decisions and which several conservative justices have explicitly backed.

“This court has long recognized that seeking to improve diversity -- including geographic, socioeconomic, and racial diversity -- is not the same as pursuing racial balancing, and that the former goal may be pursued through race-neutral methods,” the school board argued.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton blocked the policy for the current admissions cycle, but a federal appeals court put that ruling on hold on a 2-1 vote. The challengers asked the Supreme Court to lift that hold and restore Hilton’s order.

The school, which received 2,540 applications this year, is set to issue admissions decisions by April 30. It told the justices that “overhauling the admissions at this late date would be convulsive.”

Coalition for TJ said Hilton warned the school board in September to be ready for a ruling against it. “The board failed to heed Judge Hilton’s warning and prepare an alternative admissions plan,” the group argued.

The case is Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, 21A590.

(Describes background, arguments starting in fourth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

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