WE CAN HOPE: Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board: The Shape of Things to Come?
Nevertheless, just as fundamental economic realities exist regardless of contrary wishful thinking, those who have adopted the Kendian concept of “equity” as official policy are learning that the law is not so easily ignored. An excellent example of this occurred last week in the case of Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, where a federal court entered a summary judgment declaring such a Kendian program flatly illegal.
The case arose out of a new admissions program for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (“TJ”), a highly regarded public high school in affluent Northern Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.. Historically, admission to TJ has been extremely competitive, with applicants having to satisfy certain minimum requirements (such as a minimum core GPA of 3.0 and scores above certain thresholds on three standardized tests) to be eligible to apply for admission. As with many other STEM-focused programs, this merit-based admission process resulted in large numbers of Asian-American students at TJ: the 2020-21 class was 71.79% Asian-American, 18.34% white, 3.05% Hispanic, and 1.77% Black, whereas the overall student population of the area was 36.8% white, 27.1% Hispanic, 19.8% Asian-American, and 10% Black. . . .
A coalition of local parents (including many parents of Asian-American students) sued, claiming the Board’s actions constituted illegal racial discrimination. The Court found that the evidence was uncontroverted that the Board did in fact act with racially discriminatory intent, and thus the Court was required to examine the policy under strict scrutiny analysis. As typically occurs once strict scrutiny is invoked, the Court found that the Board did not meet the exceedingly high bar that the law requires for intentional racial discrimination (i.e., existence of a compelling interest and means that are narrowly tailored to achieve that interest). The Court notably rejected the typical word game of recasting discrimination as “pursuing diversity.” . . .
The Court thus recognized what Judge Ho and many other commentators have been saying for years: the Kendian concept of viewing every racial “imbalance” as sufficient justification for positive discrimination to achieve “balance” or “equity” is illegal under very well settled law. To me, the Court’s decision in this case was easy, and I hope it will inspire others to file similar challenges against DEI programs.
“Antiracism” is various flavors of stupid and evil, and it is absolutely unAmerican.