Supreme Court Is Asked to Hear a New Admissions Case on Race

[Anonymous]

In the latest challenge to the role race may play in school admissions, a legal activist group asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hear a case on how students are selected at one of the country’s top high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in May that Thomas Jefferson, a public school in Alexandria, Va., did not discriminate in its admissions. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian law group, wants the Supreme Court to overturn that decision, arguing that the school’s new admissions policies disadvantaged Asian American applicants.

At issue is the use of what the school board said were race-neutral criteria to achieve a diverse student body. The constitutionality of such practices was left open in the Supreme Court’s decision in June against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, effectively banning the use of race-conscious admissions practices by colleges, though the majority opinion said, quoting an earlier decision, that “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”

Although the new case involves a prestigious magnet high school, the decision could ultimately affect colleges, which are implementing new admissions criteria after the June decision. “This is the next frontier,” Joshua P. Thompson, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, has said of the litigation.

In its filing Monday asking the Supreme Court to review the case, the Pacific Legal Foundation argued that Thomas Jefferson’s admissions plan was “intentionally designed to achieve the same results as overt racial discrimination.”

The Supreme Court has already had one encounter with the case. In April 2022, the court rejected an emergency request from the Coalition for T.J. to block the new admissions criteria while the case moved forward. That was before the court’s decision in June banning race-conscious admissions in higher education.

Even so, the court’s three most conservative members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have granted the request.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/us/politics/supreme-court-thomas-jefferson-high-school-admissions.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

[Anonymous]

FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

Lol

No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

Lol

No.

Do you think the new board members representing districts who go from having constituents at TJ back to having almost none are going to be inclined to support or fund it? When a magnet school only serves students coming from a few pyramids, what incentive is there for the rest of the county to support it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

Lol

No.

Do you think the new board members representing districts who go from having constituents at TJ back to having almost none are going to be inclined to support or fund it? When a magnet school only serves students coming from a few pyramids, what incentive is there for the rest of the county to support it?

TJ is supported by several counties and city not just FCPS. It is a Governor's School not fcps school. FCPS merely operates it on behalf of the Virginia.

[Anonymous]

Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
(1) establish an adverse impact caused by the practice
(2) does the practice have legitimate justification
(3) Is there any less discriminatory alternative.

I'd think allocated seats for top students in every FCPS school would be a solid practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
(1) establish an adverse impact caused by the practice
(2) does the practice have legitimate justification
(3) Is there any less discriminatory alternative.

I'd think allocated seats for top students in every FCPS school would be a solid practice.

You’re missing the point. The plaintiffs want to expand the prohibition on race-based diversity to include race-blind or race-neutral policies designed for racial diversity goals. And, as we know, the current Supreme Court is comfortable overturning precedent to meet its own end goals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

Arlington has not done that. Only Alexandria does not send students to TJ.

[Anonymous]

"Top" students in some FCPS schools are "bottom" students in others.

Anonymous wrote:Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
(1) establish an adverse impact caused by the practice
(2) does the practice have legitimate justification
(3) Is there any less discriminatory alternative.

I'd think allocated seats for top students in every FCPS school would be a solid practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
(1) establish an adverse impact caused by the practice
(2) does the practice have legitimate justification
(3) Is there any less discriminatory alternative.

I'd think allocated seats for top students in every FCPS school would be a solid practice.

You’re missing the point. The plaintiffs want to expand the prohibition on race-based diversity to include race-blind or race-neutral policies designed for racial diversity goals. And, as we know, the current Supreme Court is comfortable overturning precedent to meet its own end goals.

It is inarguable that the admissions process used prior to the changes for the Class of 2025 had disparate impacts both along racial and socioeconomic axes.

The logic of Judge Hilton's reasoning in the original District Court opinion would suggest that it's unlawful to seek to rectify any existing discriminatory policy because moving from, say, segregation to integration would have a disparate impact.

That logic is clearly garbage and that's why it was thoroughly raked over the coals by judges who warranted promotions that Hilton has never received.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Top" students in some FCPS schools are "bottom" students in others.

Anonymous wrote:Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
(1) establish an adverse impact caused by the practice
(2) does the practice have legitimate justification
(3) Is there any less discriminatory alternative.

I'd think allocated seats for top students in every FCPS school would be a solid practice.

This is just plainly, manifestly false.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Playing arm-chair lawyer here:

To prove a policy has disparate impact, plaintiff has to prove:
...

You’re missing the point. The plaintiffs want to expand the prohibition on race-based diversity to include race-blind or race-neutral policies designed for racial diversity goals. And, as we know, the current Supreme Court is comfortable overturning precedent to meet its own end goals.

Disparate impact in the law of the United States refers to practices in employment, housing, and other areas that adversely affect one group of people of a protected characteristic more than another, even though rules applied by employers or landlords are formally neutral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

Bruh...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to just follow Arlington's lead and withdraw from the magnet. Let Loudon deal with it

Lol

No.

Do you think the new board members representing districts who go from having constituents at TJ back to having almost none are going to be inclined to support or fund it? When a magnet school only serves students coming from a few pyramids, what incentive is there for the rest of the county to support it?

TJ is supported by several counties and city not just FCPS. It is a Governor's School not fcps school. FCPS merely operates it on behalf of the Virginia.

Decline to operate it. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the latest challenge to the role race may play in school admissions, a legal activist group asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hear a case on how students are selected at one of the country’s top high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in May that Thomas Jefferson, a public school in Alexandria, Va., did not discriminate in its admissions. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian law group, wants the Supreme Court to overturn that decision, arguing that the school’s new admissions policies disadvantaged Asian American applicants.

At issue is the use of what the school board said were race-neutral criteria to achieve a diverse student body. The constitutionality of such practices was left open in the Supreme Court’s decision in June against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, effectively banning the use of race-conscious admissions practices by colleges, though the majority opinion said, quoting an earlier decision, that “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”

Although the new case involves a prestigious magnet high school, the decision could ultimately affect colleges, which are implementing new admissions criteria after the June decision. “This is the next frontier,” Joshua P. Thompson, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, has said of the litigation.

In its filing Monday asking the Supreme Court to review the case, the Pacific Legal Foundation argued that Thomas Jefferson’s admissions plan was “intentionally designed to achieve the same results as overt racial discrimination.”

The Supreme Court has already had one encounter with the case. In April 2022, the court rejected an emergency request from the Coalition for T.J. to block the new admissions criteria while the case moved forward. That was before the court’s decision in June banning race-conscious admissions in higher education.

Even so, the court’s three most conservative members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have granted the request.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/us/politics/supreme-court-thomas-jefferson-high-school-admissions.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

Yes, they use a race-blind process that selects mostly Asians. Suspect even our illegitimate supreme court won't bother with this one.

[Anonymous]

So, functionally here, the Coalition is going to have to get one more justice interested in hearing the case, and then another one interested in voting along with their interests.

It would have required no effort at all for any two of Kavanaugh, Barrett, and/or Roberts to vote to grant the stay of the 4th Circuit decision and disallow the admissions process from continuing if it were indeed that great of a human rights violation. In all likelihood, at least two classes and 1100 seats will be granted between when they made that decision and when this case is actually up for certiorari/review.

Indeed, none of the named plaintiffs in the case even have a vested interest in it anymore. Their children are no longer eligible to apply to TJ and one of them even was recently admitted under the new process. That's not super critical to the case itself, but it does put a significant dent in the argument regarding discrimination.