A federal appeals court has upheld the admissions policies at Virginia’s top public high school, ruling that the school district didn’t discriminate against students of Asian ethnicity by trying to reduce their presence in the student body.
The decision, issued Tuesday by a panel of three judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, overturns a lower court ruling last year that found it illegal and unfair for Fairfax County School Board’s to try to “balance” the racial makeup of student population at the Thomas Jefferson (TJ) High School for Science and Technology.
The school, which is regularly named one of the best in the country, has long had a highly competitive race-blind, merit-based admissions system. For decades, students of Asian immigrant families made up an overwhelming 70 percent majority of TJ’s student body.
In 2020, in the wake of a nationwide discussion of racism sparked by the death of Georg Floyd, the school board overhauled TJ’s admissions process, eliminating the high-stakes standardized test and guaranteeing a certain number of seats for each middle school’s 8th-grade class across Fairfax County, among other changes.
With the new standard, the district admitted to TJ significantly fewer Asian students, who accounted for 54 percent of the Class of 2025, in contrast to 73 percent of students admitted to the Class of 2024 under the old rules.
At the same time, the percentage of black students increased from 1 percent to 7 percent and the percentage of Hispanic students increased from 3 percent to 11 percent. The percentage of white students also increased from a little less than 18 percent to 22 percent.
The changes prompted a federal lawsuit, with parent organization Coalition for TJ arguing that the school district has engaged in racial discrimination against Asian Americans.
However, Tuesday’s majority opinion dismissed the Coalition’s discrimination claim, saying that increasing the racial diversity at TJ is a legitimate cause.
“Under the challenged admissions policy, Asian American applicants to TJ enjoy far greater success in securing offers of admission than do prospective students from any other racial or ethnic group. Thus, the Coalition’s remarkable efforts to twist TJ’s admissions statistics and to prove a disproportionate, adverse impact on Asian Americans students fall flat,” Circuit Judge Robert King, a Clinton appointee, wrote in the opinion.
“By the same token, the Coalition’s contention that the Board’s aim to expand access to TJ and to enhance the overall diversity of TJ’s student population constitutes per se intentional racial discrimination against Asian American students simply runs counter to common sense,” he added.
In a separate concurring opinion, Biden-appointed Circuit Judge Toby Heytens wrote that the Coalition failed to show any evidence that could decisively prove the school board revamped the policies with the purpose of disadvantaging Asian students.
The Coalition did show text messages sent in the fall of 2020 between school board members, including one that read “will whiten our schools and kick ou[t] Asians. How is that achieving the goals of diversity?” and one that read “there has been an anti [A]sian feel underlying some of this, hate to say it lol.”
However, Heytens said those messages either reflect concerns about plans that ended up being scrapped or reveal frustration with certain Anti-Asian remarks by the superintendent, who is not a board member.
“None of these conversations contain any hint that any Board member intended or desired to create a policy that would adversely affect Asian American students,” he wrote.
Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing, a Trump appointee and the sole dissenter on the case, argued that it was no accident that the enrollment of Asian students at TJ dropped while that of every other racial group increased.
“The majority, however, refuses to look past the Policy’s neutral varnish,” Rushing wrote in her dissenting opinion, arguing that the evidence shows both an “undisputed racial motivation” and an “undeniable racial result.”
“The twelve-member Board plainly stated its intention to craft an admissions policy for TJ that would reform the racial composition of the student body to reflect the racial demographics of the district,” she noted, adding that the board “repeatedly requested and received detailed racial data” throughout the policy-making process.
“Then, in the final Policy, the Board allocated seats at TJ by middle school—specifically, the school applicants attend, not the school to which they are zoned—knowing that choice would significantly reduce the number of students admitted from ”feeder“ schools, which historically sent large percentages of Asian students to TJ.”
Rushing also argued that those border members’ private text messages were convincing enough proof that they did understand that the new admissions process discriminates against Asian students.
The evidence “leaves no doubt about the Board’s discriminatory purpose,” Rushing wrote.
The Coalition has vowed to bring the legal battle to the nation’s highest court.
“Across Fairfax County, parents of current and former TJ students are cheering the decision as a necessary step on the path to ultimate victory for all Americans in the U.S. Supreme Court,” the group said in a statement.
“Our commitment to upholding the principles of equal opportunity, meritocracy, and diversity remains unwavering,” said Asra Nomani, an immigrant from India and the mother of a TJ graduate. She is also a frequent guest of EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
“We will absolutely win in the U.S. Supreme Court, and our case, Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, will be as historic as Brown v. Board of Education in fighting racism and protecting equal rights for all,” she continued. “We look forward to defeating the UnFairfax County School Board in the U.S. Supreme Court—for all Americans.”
