A group of parents challenged the new admissions criteria for Thomas Jefferson High School, arguing it unconstitutionally discriminated against Asian-American students.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away a challenge to the admissions policy at a prestigious Virginia high school that administrators say is designed to mitigate socioeconomic and geographic barriers for prospective students.
The decision from the high court not to take up the appeal by a group of parents challenging the admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology leaves intact a lower court decision upholding the criteria, which school officials argue is race neutral. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit concluded last year that the goal of the program is to foster diversity among the school’s student body, though the parents that brought the case said it impermissibly discriminated against Asian-American students.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision not to hear the case. In a dissenting opinion joined by Thomas, Alito said the admissions model adopted by the high school „has been trumpeted to potential replicators as a blueprint for evading“ the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision.
„The holding below effectively licenses official actors to discriminate against any racial group with impunity as long as that group continues to perform at a higher rate than other groups. That is indefensible,“ Alito wrote. He concluded that „the Court’s willingness to swallow the aberrant decision below is hard to understand. We should wipe the decision off the books.“Affirmative action at the Supreme Court
The case is the latest involving affirmative action to arrive at the court since it issued its landmark ruling last June at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. In the wake of its 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has already been asked to temporarily stop the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from considering race in its admissions process, but .
The challenge to West Point’s policies arose out of a footnote in the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts in the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases, in which he said the Supreme Court’s decision to the nation’s service academies. Roberts‘ opinion also warned that schools shouldn’t try to get around the court’s affirmative action ruling through application essays or other means, writing „‚[w]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.'“
This case involves the admissions process at an Alexandria, Virginia-based high school, which is considered to be one of the best in the country. A group of parents in Fairfax County, a wealthy enclave of Washington, D.
