The Supreme Court on Tuesday avoided another contentious debate over race and education by turning away a challenge to an admissions policy aimed at encouraging diversity at a Virginia high school.
The high court’s decision not to intervene in the case comes just months after the conservative court ended the consideration of race in college admissions, NBC News reported.
Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented, saying the court should have struck down the policy.
"We should wipe the decision off the books," Alito wrote of the lower court decision that allowed the admissions process to remain in place.
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The latest case involved Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a highly selective public high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, that introduced a new admissions policy in 2022.
The school maintains that the policy, which does not consider standardized test scores and guarantees places for top students in various middle schools in the county, is race neutral.
The changes led to a decline in the number of Asian American students and an increase in Black and Latino students.
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A group called Coalition for TJ, which opposes the policy, sued, citing evidence that the plan was implemented with an intent to “racially balance the freshman class by excluding Asian-Americans.”
The challengers say the policy violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which requires that the law apply equally to everyone.
They argued in court papers that the court should take up the case because other high schools have adopted similar plans that are intended to “accomplish a racial objective” while appearing on their face to be race neutral.
The school board’s lawyers argued that the new policy “removes both socioeconomic and geographic barriers” using criteria that is “race neutral and race blind.”
The Supreme Court in its June decision invalidated the admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina on those grounds. Conservatives have long complained about affirmative action, which the Supreme Court had previously upheld on narrow grounds.
Before the recent Supreme Court ruling, a federal judge ruled against the Fairfax County School Board in the Virginia case.
In April 2022, the Supreme Court turned away a request from the challengers asking for the district court judge’s ruling to be immediately implemented.
The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court ruling in a May 2023 ruling that came just a month before the Supreme Court’s decision ending the consideration of race in college admissions. Coalition for TJ then appealed to the Supreme Court.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
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