Supreme Court won’t hear case over elite US high school admissions policy said to discriminate against Asian-Americans
- Asian-Americans went from 73 per cent of those offered admission the year before the change to 54 per cent in 2021, 60 per cent in 2022 and 62 per cent in 2023
- The justices recently made a landmark affirmative action ruling rejecting race-conscious programmes used at Harvard and the University of North Carolina
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a chance to further restrict efforts to promote diversity in education, turning away an appeal by a coalition of parents and students who argued that an elite Virginia public school’s revised admissions policy racially discriminates against Asian-Americans.
The justices left in place a lower court’s ruling rejecting the claim by the plaintiffs that the admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology violates the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal protection guarantee. Asian-Americans make up most students at the school located in the Washington suburb of Alexandria.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision not to hear the case, calling the ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals “patently incorrect” in what it takes to “prove intentional race discrimination”.
The court’s 6-3 conservative majority last June in a landmark ruling rejected race-conscious college and university admissions policies long used to raise the number of black, Hispanic and other minority students on campuses.
The highly selective Thomas Jefferson, a magnet school nicknamed “TJ” that is focused on maths, science and technology, consistently is rated as one the best US public high schools.