{"id":405,"date":"2024-03-01T11:29:03","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T15:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/?p=405"},"modified":"2024-03-01T12:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T16:02:56","slug":"supreme-court-declines-to-hear-challenge-to-race-conscious-secondary-school-admissions-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/2024\/03\/01\/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-challenge-to-race-conscious-secondary-school-admissions-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to Race-Conscious Secondary School Admissions Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 20, 2024, the Supreme Court denied<\/a> the Petitioners\u2019 request for a writ of certiorari<\/em> in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board<\/em>.\u00a0 This denial followed the Court\u2019s recent decisions striking down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard <\/em>SFFA, and a similar case from the University of North Carolina.\u00a0 Some expected the Court to seize this opportunity to prohibit similar admissions criteria in secondary schooling.\u00a0 Such a determination, however, is reserved for now.\u00a0 Because its model has escaped scrutiny from the Supreme Court, the policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (\u201cThomas Jefferson HS\u201d) may very well become a model for K-12 institutions that want to diversify their student body without protracted legal challenges or drawing the ire of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson HS \u2013 a public magnet school based in Alexandria, Virginia which draws its student body from Fairfax County and adjacent communities \u2013 has long been considered one of the most prestigious and competitive secondary schools in the nation.\u00a0 In 2020, in an apparent attempt to increase the enrollment of Black and Latinx students, the school significantly amended its admissions process.\u00a0 Among other things, the school stopped requiring a $100 application fee and standardized test scores and opted instead to consider more holistic \u201clife experience\u201d factors, such as a student\u2019s eligibility for free- or reduced-cost lunch, a student\u2019s status as an English language learner, and whether the student attended a \u201chistorically underrepresented\u201d public middle school.\u00a0 The applicant\u2019s name, sex, race, and ethnicity still remained hidden to admissions staff.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, the overhaul had the intended effect.\u00a0 However, while the revised admissions criteria substantially boosted the school\u2019s Black and Latinx enrollment, the Asian-American enrollment fell from approximately 73 to 54 percent.\u00a0 Petitioners, a parents\u2019 group, sued the school board alleging that the new admissions criteria violated the Equal Protection Clause.\u00a0 U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton agreed and issued an order precluding the use of the new criteria.\u00a0 In 2022, the Fourth Circuit reversed this holding<\/a> determining that because the admissions policy did not consider race explicitly<\/em>, it was constitutional unless the challengers could demonstrate that either the policy disproportionately affected the Asian-American community, or that the School Board adopted the policy with a discriminatory purpose.\u00a0 The Fourth Circuit found that the Petitioners\u2019 lacked sufficient evidence to support either finding.<\/p>\n

The Court considered the Petitioners\u2019 application in five separate conferences before ultimately denying the writ, with three justices dissenting from the denial.\u00a0 Justice Alito authored the dissent and argued that the Court\u2019s denial may \u201cserve as a blueprint for evading\u201d Students for Fair Admissions.<\/em>\u00a0 The dissent explicitly noted that the deans of several prominent universities have \u201copenly advocated for schools to emulate [Thomas Jefferson HS]\u2019s admissions model.\u201d\u00a0 School districts across the country are actively pursuing options to foster racial integration in their schools. And as a potential admissions model for secondary and higher education institutions that actually passes constitutional muster (for now), Thomas Jefferson HS will likely fuel the continuation of the ongoing legal saga in race-conscious admissions policies generally for some time to come.\u00a0 Whether the Supreme Court will have the occasion to establish clearer or stricter guidance for race-conscious admissions policies remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 20, 2024, the Supreme Court denied the Petitioners\u2019 request for a writ of certiorari in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board.\u00a0 This denial followed the Court\u2019s recent decisions striking down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard SFFA, and a similar case from the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to Race-Conscious Secondary School Admissions Policy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[90,299,298],"ppma_author":[195,300],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-lisa-scruggs","tag-matthew-caminiti","tag-race-conscious-secondary-school-admissions-policy"],"authors":[{"term_id":195,"user_id":371,"is_guest":0,"slug":"ltscruggs","display_name":"Lisa T. Scruggs","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2019\/06\/scruggslisa-125x150.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Scruggs","first_name":"Lisa T.","job_title":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/lisatscruggs.html","description":"Read Lisa's bio.<\/a>"},{"term_id":300,"user_id":483,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mmcaminiti","display_name":"Matthew Caminiti","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/03\/caminitimatt-100x100.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Caminiti","first_name":"Matthew","job_title":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/matthewcaminiti.html","description":"Read Matthew's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/updateeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}