Judge won't delay ruling on admissions discrimination in Va.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal judge has again ruled against a northern Virginia school system that he found guilty of discriminating against Asian American students when it overhauled its admissions policies at a highly selective high school.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton rejected a request from Fairfax County Public Schools to delay the implementation of his ruling against the new admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
The school system argued that its selection process for the incoming freshman class is well underway, and implementing his ruling now would throw the process into chaos.
But Hilton said Friday that the school system has been aware for months that its process could be in jeopardy, and said it should be prepared now to revise it to eliminate aspects he found unconstitutional.
He said there is a risk of “irreparable harm to the students who have been found to have been discriminated against” if the school system were allowed to use those same procedures for a second straight year.
The case has been closely watched as courts continue to evaluate the role that racial considerations can play when deciding who should be admitted to a particular school. Similar debates have popped up at elite public schools in New York, California and elsewhere. Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process.
Hilton ruled last month that impermissible “racial balancing” was at the core of what motivated the county school board to overhaul admissions at “TJ,” a highly sought-after school near the nation's capital that is often ranked as the best public high schools in the country.
For decades, Black...