Less than a year after its decision, which ruled the admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina unconstitutional for explicitly considering an applicant’s race as part of their admissions process, the Supreme Court declined to wade into another dispute over race in school admissions. The justices rejected a request to review a challenge against an admissions policy at a prestigious public magnet school in Virginia.
The school’s policy does not directly take race into account, but rather considers socioeconomic factors when allocating some of the school’s 550 seats. The challengers argued that the policy, which was ostensibly created to reduce the number of Asian American students (who previously accounted for nearly three out of four admission offers), discriminates on the grounds of race.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s decision not to take up this case, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Alito held the view that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit’s decision to uphold the admissions policy was rooted in a “patently incorrect and dangerous understanding of what a plaintiff must show to prove intentional race discrimination”.
The school at the center of this controversy is the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Until recently, the school used an entrance exam amongst other selection factors such as grades, essays, and recommendation letters to determine successful admissions. However, post-2020, the Fairfax County School Board adopted a new holistic admissions policy intended to increase socioeconomic diversity at the school. Reportedly some students began preparing as early as third grade for this entrance exam.
With the implementation of the new policy, the number of Asian American students who received admission offers took a 19 percentage-point plunge, while ways offer made to Black and Hispanic students roughly quadrupled. The challengers from federal court in Virginia suggested that even if the policy does not directly consider race, it was created in order to reduce the number of Asian American students at the school, therefore violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Fourteen months after a divided court declined to block the school from using the new policy, the justices decided in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard College. In this, Chief Justice John Roberts cautioned schools against trying to circumvent the court’s decision “through application essays or other means”, emphasizing that “what cannot be done directly”, i.e., the consideration of an applicant’s race “cannot be done indirectly”.
Despite in Alito’s 10-page opinion, where he heavily criticized the 4th Circuit’s decision, arguing that it effectively allowed government officials “to discriminate against any racial group with impunity as long as that group continues to perform at a higher rate than other groups”, the case was declined by the justices without any accompanying explanation.
Josua Thompson, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, who represents the challengers, expressed his disappointment with the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case, stating it had bypassed an opportunity to end race-based discrimination in K-12 admissions. “Discrimination against students based on their race is not only ethically wrong but also a clear violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.”
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.