The supposed conservative majority on the Supreme Court has once again declined to weigh in on a contentious issue and will allow a lower court ruling to stand with seriously harmful implications.
On Tuesday, the court announced it had declined to hear a case that argued that changes to the admissions process of Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia, had unfairly harmed Asian students. The changes were made in 2020 with the explicit goal of increasing the number of black and Hispanic students and reducing the number of Asian students.
It was a blatant affirmative action scheme that sacrificed academic merit for the nebulous goal of diversity. And, ironically, the greatest beneficiaries of the changes to the admissions process were white students.
The lawsuit, which has been working through the lower court system for years, was filed by the Coalition for TJ, a group of alumni, parents, and community members of the Fairfax County, Virginia, magnet school that had once placed as the top high school in the nation.
The coalition won the initial ruling at the district court level, only to have that ruling reversed by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An appeal to the Supreme Court was the plaintiffs’ last hope to restore the old admissions process that had made the school one of the most competitive and elite in the nation.
In a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito noted that the 4th Circuit panel had ruled that “the plaintiff’s claim failed simply because the challenged changes did not reduce the percentage of Asian American admittees below the percentage of Asian American students in the schools in the jurisdictions served by the magnet school.”
“What the Fourth Circuit majority held, in essence, is that intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe,” Alito wrote. “This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction.”
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The court’s refusal to hear the case is the second time the court has declined to hear a school-related case in recent weeks, with the effect of keeping in place a harmful ruling from a lower court. Last month, the court declined to hear a case that would have allowed the court to say that schools can enforce sex-segregated bathrooms definitively.
But when Thomas and Alito are the only conservative justices with any spine, indefensible lower court rulings that cry out for correction will continue to stand. The next Republican president should take that to heart when nominating the next conservative justice to the Supreme Court.