The Thomas Jefferson School in Fairfax, Va., has long been an elite public school, accepting students entirely on the basis of academic aptitude. A very high percentage of the students who made it were of Asian ancestry and a low percentage were of black or Hispanic ancestry. Naturally, that made the school a target for those professional complainers who think that all group disparities must be stamped out.
The activists managed to gain control of the admissions criteria and changed it so that TJ would have a “better” student mix. Those who wanted to maintain the school’s high standards went to court.
The Fourth Circuit has just ruled against them, upholding the new admissions scheme. For an excellent review of the case, I suggest reading Cornell law professor William Jacobson’s article on Legal Insurrection.
He points out the silliest of the grounds given by the majority (2-1), namely that because Asians still are doing well in TJ admissions, they have no grounds for complaint. Jacobson quotes from the dissent: “’Invidious discrimination does not become less so because the discrimination accomplished is of a lesser magnitude.’ Feeney, 442 U.S. at 277. If a State enacts a policy with the purpose and effect of trimming down the success of one particular racial group to a level the State finds more appropriate, it has discriminated against that racial group.”
The plaintiffs are not giving up. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court takes this case and rules that discrimination for racial balancing is just as illegal as discrimination for other purposes.