Lawyers in northern Virginia have brought a lawsuit against the nation’s top public school over changes to its admissions policies which may discriminate against Asian American families.
“Racial balancing was always at the forefront of what was going on here,” Chris Kiesar, attorney for the Coalition for TJ, said of school’s new policies. In court papers, lawyers for the coalition cited text exchanges between board members in which one member says “there has been an anti-Asian feel underlying some of this, hate to say.”
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria serves as a strong track to the Ivy League. Parents in the region compete fiercely for a spot, with current admissions costing $100 per application and focusing heavily on standardized testing as a measure.
Those policies took center stage during 2020 when debate over racial equality cast a spotlight on every aspect of society – in this case, the decades of underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students in the top schools in the nation.
FILE – In this March 10, 2021 file photo, Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Erin Wilcox speaks at a news conference outside the federal courthouse, in Alexandria, Va. The elite public high school in northern Virginia discriminated against Asian American families when it overhauled its admissions policies amid a push to increase Black and Hispanic representation at the school, lawyers argued Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. A federal judge in Alexandria heard arguments on whether the new admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology discriminates against Asian Americans, or simply tries to level the playing field so that other minorities can gain admission. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat, File)
Fairfax County School Board tried to address the imbalance by implementing a geographic quota: The school would guarantee admission to the top students of each middle school in the county and consider factors such as income.
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But an attorney for families who filed the lawsuit against the FCSB argue that geographic quotes are just another name for racial quotas.
ALEXANDRIA, VA – JULY 1 Thomas Jefferson High School admitted less than 10 black students to the Class of 2024 sparking outrage and debate among current students and alumni is seen July 01, 2020 in Alexandria, VA. (Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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Sona Rewari, an attorney for the school board, said there is nothing discriminatory about the new policy and that it is merely designed “to give top students from every part of Fairfax County a meaningful opportunity to attend TJ.”
New York City faced similar accusations when former Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to introduce geographic quotas to rebalance schools in 2018 – with a more clear emphasis on rebalancing the racial representation of those schools.
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De Blasio said his policies helped schools “reflect the city better,” but critics quickly pointed out that the policies disproportionately hurt the Asian American community, especially those from poorer schools like Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School, The Hill wrote at the time.
And the case in Alexandria makes similar claims to those made by a case filed by Asian families against Harvard University, which has made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The Alexandria case is unlikely to go to trial, with U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton indicating his ruling will decide the case, though either side will be free to appeal.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.