Feb. 22, 2024 - Epoch Times
13:09
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| Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that was quite shocking to most people who actually follow the court closely. | |
| Although, to understand this decision, as well as the implications that it has for the whole nation, I need to give you a bit of backstory here. | |
| To start with, there's a school located about 20 minutes outside of Washington, D.C., called the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. | |
| This school offers classes from 9th to 12th grade, and two years ago, it was nationally ranked as the number one best public high school in America, at least according to the U.S. News& World Report. | |
| It's basically what's known as a magnet school. | |
| There are 1,900 seats available, and talented students apply to get in based on merit. | |
| However, like most schools of this type here in America, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, they had what the administration considered a problem. | |
| That's because the demographics of the student body in that high school, they did not reflect the demographics of the general population. | |
| There was not enough black students and there were too many Asian students. | |
| Now, in a normal meritocratic society where race is not really a factor, this wouldn't be a problem. | |
| However, in the year 2020, amidst the backdrop of the BLM movement, the school board of Fairfax County, they made the decision to change their admissions criteria in order to rebalance the demographics of the student body. | |
| Now in terms of the actual admissions process, here's how the change manifested in practical terms. | |
| The school board stopped requiring a $100 application fee and standardized tests for admission. | |
| It also adopted a holistic review process that considers experience factors, such as a student's eligibility for free school lunch, their status as an English language learner, or attending a historically underrepresented public middle school. | |
| The school board also said the admissions process must be race-neutral and admissions decision-makers will not be provided an applicant's name, race, ethnicity, or sex. | |
| Meaning that in order to reshape the incoming freshman class and to stop so many Asian American students from getting admitted, the board decided to drop the use of standardized tests as well as to introduce experience factors into the admissions process. | |
| Essentially, even though they did make a point to mention that the new admissions criteria would be race-neutral, they essentially used proxies to attain their desired effect of rebalancing the racial demographic of the high school. | |
| And as a practical matter, they were quite effective. | |
| After this change was made, the proportion of Black and Hispanic students, it went from 4% up to 18%, while the proportion of Asian students, it went down from 73% to 54%. | |
| And also, just as a fun aside, during that same time period, the school went from being ranked the number one high school in the country to the number five high school in the country. | |
| But that part might just be a coincidence. | |
| Regardless, because of this change, Asian American parents and Asian American students, they formed an organization called Coalition for TJ. And in March of 2021, they filed a federal lawsuit against the Fairfax County School Board, alleging that this change in policy directly discriminated against Asian Americans. | |
| Here's specifically how they described what was taking place in this particular school. | |
| The Thomas Jefferson School Board overhauled its admissions to T.J. in 2020 to racially balance the freshman class by excluding Asian Americans. | |
| By removing standardized tests from its admissions analysis, coupled with adding experience factors, the school reduced their percentage of Asian American students being accepted. | |
| Now, initially, after about a year of legal back and forth, the lower court ruled in favor of this coalition. | |
| Specifically, the lower district court, they granted the coalition for TJ a summary judgment, and they ordered the school to return to their previous admission policies. | |
| Quote, The district court found that direct and circumstantial evidence supported the claim that changes were made to the admissions policy for discriminating on the basis of race, to the detriment of Asian American applicants. | |
| That court issued an injunction against implementation of the changes. | |
| However, The school board, they appealed that decision to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| And after about another year and a half of legal back and forth, the appeals court ruled in favor of the school board. | |
| Specifically, the appeals court issued a split two to one decision, reversing the lower court's ruling and allowing the Thomas Jefferson High School to continue with their new admissions policy. | |
| But the appeal court's rationale was likely not what you'd expect. | |
| Essentially, their decision was twofold. | |
| First of all, they ruled that even with this change in policy, Asian Americans still had the best success at getting admitted to this particular school. | |
| The race-neutral policy spurred an increase of nearly 1,000 more students applying to attend the high school, and more than half of the admission offers extended went to Asian American students. | |
| Black students received less than 8%, Hispanic students were given slightly more than 11%, and white students received more than 22% of the offers. | |
| Meaning, according to the court's rationale here, even with the new policy, even though it took Asian Americans from 73% to 54%, it still made Asians the most successful at getting admitted. | |
| And therefore, quote, the policy visits no racially disparate impact on Asian American students. | |
| Indeed, those students have had greater success in securing admissions to TJ under the policy than students from any other racial or ethnic group. | |
| And so, that was part one of their rationale, that even though the percentage was cut by roughly 20%, since Asians were still the most represented, the policy was somehow not discriminatory. | |
| Second, the appeals court decided that the drop in Asian American students at the Thomas Jefferson High School, it did not fall below the average percentage of Asian American students in the general area where the high school was located. | |
| And therefore, again, it proved that the policy was not discriminatory. | |
| However, if you really think about that second point, it's rather wild. | |
| Here's specifically what it means in practical terms. | |
| Let's say, in the city of Alexandria, the average high school has about 6% Asian students, while Thomas Jefferson High School used to have 73% Asian students. | |
| Then, after the school board implemented their change in the year 2020 in order to change the racial demographics, Thomas Jefferson High School decreased their Asian students from 73% down to 54%. | |
| Now that's, of course, a big drop, but since it did not go below the baseline of the other schools in the area, well, the court, meaning the appeals court, decided that it was still okay, meaning in practical terms that this racially discriminatory policy should not be considered discrimination because it wasn't effective enough. | |
| Now, as you would imagine, the Coalition for TJ, they were not pleased with this ruling, and therefore they appealed this decision all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| Here's part of what they wrote in their petition. | |
| Despite evidence that the board chose the new criteria to further its racial balancing goal and evidence that the policy substantially reduced both the raw number and the proportion of Asian Americans admitted, the Fourth Circuit held that the admissions changes did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. | |
| And here's where things you can say got interesting. | |
| Because shortly after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled as they did in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a separate case, overturned affirmative action. | |
| Specifically, back in June of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a separate case called Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, wherein they officially ended the so-called affirmative action in college admissions. | |
| And so here was a general timeline of events so you can keep everything in mind. | |
| In May of 2023, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Coalition for TJ. In June of 2023, just one month later, in a separate case, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action. | |
| And then in August of 2023, the Coalition for TJ filed their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for their case. | |
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| And so with that as the general backdrop, you would assume that the Supreme Court would take up this case as well from Thomas Jefferson High School in order to make that decision consistent with the other affirmative action case, to make it consistent across the board. | |
| But you would be wrong. | |
| That's because, just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. | |
| In a simple unsigned order, they threw out the petition that came from the Coalition for TJ without any explanation. | |
| Now, the way that these petitions work is that at least four out of the nine Supreme Court justices, they must vote in favor of granting a petition in order to move it to the next stage, to the oral argument stage. | |
| And apparently, that did not happen here. | |
| As to the reason for why they voted against hearing the case, well, that's not clear, because the unsigned order did not have an explanation. | |
| However, alongside this unsigned order came a dissent. | |
| You can see it up on your screen. | |
| It was written by Justice Sam Alito, and it was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. | |
| And in very strong words, Justice Sam Alito explains why he disagrees with the court and that if it was up to him, he would have granted the appeal. | |
| Here's part of what he wrote in this dissent. | |
| Quote, The Supreme Court's willingness to swallow the apparent decision below is hard to understand. | |
| We should wipe the decision off the books, and because the court refuses to do so, I must respectfully dissent. | |
| The Fourth Circuit's decision is based on a patently incorrect and dangerous understanding of what a plaintiff must show to prove intentional race discrimination. | |
| The lower court found that direct and circumstantial evidence supported the claim that changes were made to the admissions policy for discriminating on the basis of race to the detriment of Asian American applicants. | |
| That court issued an injunction against implementation of the changes. | |
| But a divided Fourth Circuit panel reversed. | |
| Finding that the claim failed simply because the challenged changes did not reduce the percentage of Asian American admitees below the percentage of Asian American students in the schools in the jurisdiction served by the magnet school. | |
| What the Fourth Circuit majority held, in essence, is that intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe. | |
| This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction. | |
| And yet, for some reason, that won't happen. | |
| Because besides Justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, there were not two other Supreme Court justices that wanted to take up the case. | |
| And as such, the appeal court's decision stands and the new admission policy will remain. | |
| And as you would imagine, the plaintiffs in the case, meaning the coalition for TJ, were not thrilled with his decision. | |
| Here's, for instance, what the co-founder of the coalition said in a statement following the U.S. Supreme Court decision. | |
| Quote, And so that is where the situation currently stands. | |
| If I myself ever get an opportunity to actually interview some of these Supreme Court justices, I will ask them about this case. | |
| Otherwise, if you'd like to read the details of this case, including the full dissent from Justice Sam Alito, I'll throw all those links down into the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure, which I should mention is that same description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this video out to ever more people. | |
| Now lastly, if you enjoyed today's content and you're just thinking to yourself, man, I love this content, I just wish Roman would publish more episodes every week. | |
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| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from The Epoch Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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