(ProsperNews.net) – The Supreme Court ruling that ended the use of affirmative action in universities could be extended to high schools, according to legal experts. Renu Mukherjee of the Manhattan Institute said the ruling “signals that this court has little patience for institutions that engage in racial balancing.” A case that may determine the issue is Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology v. Fairfax County School Board.
Filed in 2021, the plaintiff argues that the school’s admission policy is detrimental to white and Asian Americans because it is not based on merit, but on achieving “racial balance.” In place of academic achievement, the school considers an applicant’s background, including race and whether the pupil speaks English as a first language.
When the new admissions policy was introduced, the number of Asian pupils fell dramatically. While Thomas Jefferson High School does not openly discriminate against Asian students, the policy still leads to that result, experts say. GianCarlo Canaparo of the Heritage Foundation said, “Rather than discriminate against Asians and whites explicitly, it privileged applicants from middle schools where it knew there were fewer of them.” He added that he expects the court to find indirect discrimination as unlawful as direct discrimination.
In a June ruling, the Supreme Court controversially ended “affirmative action” in colleges. The decision outlawed the decades-long practice of considering race in admissions in colleges and universities throughout the US.
The case came to the Supreme Court when Students For Fair Admissions, a group that campaigns for equality, filed a lawsuit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, saying they unlawfully discriminated against Asian Americans, who achieve the highest SAT scores of any demographic group but are underrepresented in classes.
President Biden said he strongly disagreed with the court’s ruling and defended the race-based policies in place since the 1960s. The White House is expected to issue guidance on maintaining “diversity” in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
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