WASHINGTON — 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. It leaves in doubt whether the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has the votes to strike down admissions policies that do not explicitly consider race but nevertheless lead to a more diverse class.
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. The appeals court effectively concluded that “intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe,” he added.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said in a post on X that he was disappointed the Supreme Court did not take up the case.
“This nation was built on the idea of building a better future through hard work and determination and we should recommit to those ideals. Admissions should be based on merit,” he added.
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.
“We have long believed that the new admissions process is both constitutional and in the best interests of our students,” Karl Frisch, the chairman of the Fairfax County School Board.
The changes led to a decline in the number of Asian American students and an increase in Black and Latino students.
A group…
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