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The supreme court on Tuesday turned down a challenge to the admissions policy at a prestigious Virginia high school that could have restricted efforts to promote diversity in education.
In declining to take up an appeal by a group of students and parents challenging the admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson high school for science and technology, the court leaves intact a lower court decision upholding the admissions criteria that school officials argued was “race neutral” and designed to mitigate socioeconomic and geographic barriers for prospective students.
The coalition of parents and students had argued that the school’s admissions policy racially discriminated against Asian Americans when an admissions exam was replaced with an essay and it began admitting students from a broader cross-section of schools and gave weight to poorer students and those learning English.
Last May, a lower court ruled that the admissions policy had not been changed with discriminatory intent and that the school had a legitimate interest in “expanding the array of student backgrounds.”
