A group of parents in Virginia filed a petition requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court hear a case involving admissions practices at one of the state's most prestigious magnet schools, The Washington Post reported.
The case concerns Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, frequently ranked as the top high school in the nation, and the school's changes to its admission practices in 2020, which were made in an attempt to improve diversity in response to low numbers of Black and Hispanic students.
The group, Coalition for TJ, claims that the changes resulted in a drop in Asian American enrollment at the school and are discriminatory. The group filed a lawsuit last year, and a U.S. district judge agreed with its argument, describing the new admissions process as "racial balancing" and "patently unconstitutional."
An appeals court later reversed that ruling, stating that the process was not discriminatory.
Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Coalition for TJ, filed a petition with the Supreme Court to review the ruling by the appeals court.
"The Supreme Court made clear in Students for Fair Admission that the Constitution bans discrimination based on race, full stop," said attorney Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation in a statement. "TJ's admission overhaul tried to hide its discriminatory purpose behind a patina of race-neutrality. But the school's proxy discrimination clearly violated Chief Justice [John] Roberts' warning against indirect discrimination."
The Virginia NAACP and several other organizations that represent minority groups in and around Virginia denounced the petition and stated their support for the admissions changes.
"A publicly funded educational resource, like TJ, should be equally available to all qualified students from eligible middle schools," Robert N. Barnette Jr., president of the Virginia NAACP, said in a statement. "The school district's more equitable admissions policy increases opportunities for all students, which the numbers bear out: more low-income Asian American students were accepted to TJ, and more sorely underrepresented Black and Latino students were able to apply to the school.
"We reject the shameful effort to have the Court cement a status quo that would have continued to under-identify students with fewer resources, who nevertheless deserve the same fair shot at educational advancement."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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