A federal appeals court handed down a major defeat in the argument against so-called “racial balancing” by schools to create a more ethnically and economically diverse student body this week.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a previous court ruling that an admissions policy adopted by America’s top-ranking public school—Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology—was unconstitutional and instead sided with the Fairfax County School Board’s assertion that the policy is race-neutral, and, therefore, constitutional.
Seventeen states and several organizations, including the NAACP and ACLU, submitted briefs in support of what the federal court called a “race-blind” policy that opens up doors to elite schools like Thomas Jefferson (TJ) to underprivileged students….