Federal court reinstates admissions policy found to have anti-Asian bias in Virginia school

A federal appeals court reinstated admission policies at a Virginia high school that allows race-based policies critics say discriminate against Asian Americans.

Previously, a lower court found that the admission policies by the Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) at Thomas Jefferson High School were unconstitutional because they were biased against Asians, according to the New York Post.

Positions at the elite magnet school in suburban Washington, D.C. are highly sought after.

In 2020, the school district revised policies on admissions which saw Asian enrollment drop by a third, while black enrollment jumped sevenfold and Hispanic enrollment quadrupled, according to figures provided by the AP. 

The linchpin of the new admissions policy targets income, rather than race, which critics argued unfairly disadvantages Asian Americans, who do proportionately better in America in income and education. 

The parents group called Coalition for TJ argued that not only were the new admission policies unconstitutional because of racial bias, the policies also diluted the academic standing of the school. 

“Compared to [the Thomas Jefferson] Class of 2024, the proportion of students in Class of 2025 admitted with the minimal required math background of Algebra 1 in 8th grade increased sevenfold, from 4.5% to 31%, while the proportion of students admitted who had completed Algebra 2 or higher in 8th grade decreased by almost 50%, from 35% to 18%,” said the group, which filed suit trying to overturn the policy.  

In a 2-1 decision, the court’s majority found that while the racial composition of the admitted students was affected, race had nothing to do with the school board’s policy, said the AP.   

One judge strenuously objected to the majority’s opinion, saying “the evidence shows an undisputed racial motivation and an undeniable racial result” in the policy, according to the New York Post. 

Judge Allison Jones Rushing, who was nominated to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, noted in her dissent:  

“Not only did the Board explicitly state its purpose to alter TJ’s racial composition to reflect the demographics of the region, but race was central to its decision-making.”   

Coalition for TJ co-founder Asra Nomani told Fox News that the court’s decision represents “the new racism of wokism” in the country. 

“We were in the trenches in the summer of 2020 when we first started understanding that the [Fairfax] school board was putting a ‘hit’ on Asian students in order to virtue signal in this new era of racial reckoning,” she said. 

Nomani said the district’s policies came straight out of the bible of the “woke industrial complex,” Critical Race Theory (CRT).    

Nomani cited FCSB consultant, Ibram X. Kendi, one of the most famous exponents of CRT today, who recommended, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”  

Kendi was paid $48,000 by FCSB for a presentation and for pre-sales of his book, How to Be an Antiracist.  

The Federal Appeals Court decision comes even as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs another racial bias case that will have implications for the suit against FCSB and Thomas Jefferson High School.  

Plaintiffs are suing the University of North Carolina and Harvard University for similar anti-Asian admission policies. 

The Supreme Court is expected to rule sometime in the early summer.