Counsel for School Board Submits Brief to SCOTUS Requesting Denial of Certiorari
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Anonymous
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https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-170/285825/20231023143317385_23-170%20-%20Brief%20in%20Opposition.pdf
This is the School Board's legal team asserting that the Supreme Court should not grant certiorari (review) in the Coalition for TJ case. I had forgotten - and I imagine most others have as well - that the Coalition submitted its own policy proposal that explicitly provided boosts to Black and Hispanic students during the comment period. That fact alone undercuts a large portion of their case and motivations. Key quotes: "Varying outcomes for middle schools known as Advanced Academic Program (AAP) Level IV Centers provide a particularly stark illustration of the admissions skew. AAP Centers are magnet programs that offer advanced coursework to highly qualified students. JA839. Eight of the AAP Centers are “feeder schools.” But five other AAP Centers, which generally served lower-income areas, sent very few students (one or two per year) to TJ—even though their students also were high-performing and had benefited from advanced coursework." "In lieu of a lottery, petitioner (the Coalition - clarification mine) proposed a race-conscious plan that awarded an automatic preference to Black and Hispanic applicants based solely on their race. Pet. App. 17a n.3; 7 JA895. Petitioner’s proposal also would have addressed the geographic skew of the prior system by allowing each middle school to choose its top students, and it had provisions addressing socioeconomic barriers as well." "An FCPS employee noted that the previous policy’s teacher-recommendation and testing requirements—whose elimination petitioner never challenged in this litigation—favored more affluent candidates (who tended to be white or Asian), and then explained that the proposed Experience Factors would ameliorate socioeconomic obstacles to admission." "Petitioner also asserts (Pet. 9) that the Board designed the Experience Factors with the assistance of demographic data that allowed them to predict how the factors would change TJ’s racial demographics. But the Board never received any modeling on how the Experience Factors or holistic plan would affect TJ’s demographics. JA624, JA1140; Pet. App. 49a (Heytens, J., concurring). No such data existed, and neither the Board nor admissions officials ever attempted to investigate the question. JA2919, JA145. Indeed, petitioner conceded below that “it was very difficult to project the outcome of what would happen” under the new admissions plan." "Of particular note, Asian-American students from disadvantaged backgrounds benefited substantially from the Policy: the number of low-income (FRM) Asian-American admittees increased from just one student in 2020 to fifty-one in 2021 (more than the total number of Black students admitted under the Policy). Pet. App. 20a. The number of admissions offers to Asian-American students attending nonfeeder middle schools historically underrepresented at TJ increased six-fold." "The court of appeals’ conclusion on that point is entirely consistent with this Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions (the "Harvard" case - clarification mine). There, the Court held that in light of the “zero-sum” nature of admissions, conferring express advantages based on race to applicants in certain racial groups necessarily means that “an individual’s race is * * * a negative factor” for the individuals who did not receive the preference. 143 S. Ct. at 2169. That conclusion about race-conscious measures has no application to race-neutral measures like the Policy: here, despite the “zero-sum” nature of admissions, no applicant’s race is ever a negative (or positive) factor in admissions decisions, because the policy is race neutral and race blind." "And at oral argument before the Fourth Circuit, petitioner reaffirmed that an intent to increase Black and Hispanic representation would not itself render a race-neutral admissions policy unconstitutional. Petitioner should not be heard to challenge race-neutral measures under the Fourteenth Amendment when petitioner itself urged the Board to adopt race-conscious admissions criteria for TJ and embraced the legitimacy of seeking to increase Black and Hispanic admissions." --------- There can be no doubt that we currently have an activist conservative Supreme Court that is unafraid to break new ground in order to protect the privileges of in-groups. But the facts of this particular case are so weak and the means of redress so minimal (FCPS will simply design a new admissions process that achieves the same goal under a new Board that will be elected before the petition for cert is even reviewed - or will overturn it if enough conservatives pull major upsets) that I think it's increasingly a longshot that the case gets reviewed at all. |
Anonymous
| WOW. Confirmation of a lot of the facts that have been debated on this forum. It’s hard to see where the Coalition has a leg to stand on. One to 51 low income Asians is staggering. |
Anonymous
OP - agreed. I have been following this case for a while and had no idea that the lawyers for the Coalition had not challenged the elimination of the exam and the application fee - and that they broadly agreed that race-neutral methods of attempting to improve representation of Black and Hispanic students would be permissible under the 14th Amendment. That latter point is in direct contrast to Judge Hilton's original ruling at the district court level. I have no idea how you can read that document without coming to the conclusion that the Coalition for TJ is deeply disingenuous about their real agenda. Verrilli was kind to only call them out about it obliquely. |
Anonymous
| Your taxpayer dollars are paying for this. |
Anonymous
Not for the FCPS side. Verrilli is working this case pro bono. |
Anonymous
It's too bad these nutjobs in C4TJ are forcing the county to do this. |
Anonymous
Hopefully the nightmare will be over soon. The election coming up is crucial. I don't even mind if one or two conservatives end up on the Board as long as they're not Jackson, Tisler, or Davis. Giving Republicans a platform from which to beclown themselves further while giving them no real power seems like it could be an ideal arrangement. |
Anonymous
What was it in 2022 and 2023? |
Anonymous
Genuinely don't know if that information is publicly available. A criticism I have of FCPS is that the press releases for those two years are not nearly as robust - especially concerning applicant demographics. |
Anonymous
| Don Verrilli is an elitist who went to Yale and Columbia Law, but wants to destroy high performing public schools by promoting a left-wing "progressive" agenda. Lives in Upper NW DC, not Fairfax County; wonder what schools his own kids attended (almost surely not ones with much "socioeconomic diversity"). |
Anonymous
TJ's doing more than fine right now. Cry more. |
Anonymous
It's amazing to see parents in action. Even more amazing idiots like you are going crazy. Just say Coalition for TJ a few times, and it might help repair your brainwashed head. One way or the other C4TJ will live in your head, not your choice. |
Anonymous
You will be given Jackson, Tisler, and Davis. |
Anonymous
Strongly unlikely, but we'll see. The extremely vocal minority they represent always seems to underestimate the commonsense majority in the highly educated Fairfax County. |
Anonymous
Exactly! Most people feel they're making sound decisions like opening up TJ to all students not just those that can afford expensive outside enrichment. |