Washington Post : Asian students are victims of Montgomery County’s achievement gap
Is it legal to penalize top-performing Asian American students to help students of other ethnicities? Legal or not, it is happening all around the country. In February, a federal judge sided with the Pacific Legal Foundation and ruled that Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County adopted a test-free admission proces ...
The Hill : California’s obsession with racial balancing
In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which banned the use of race, sex or ethnicity in public employment, education and contracting. Things have changed drastically since then. In 2020, a California ballot measure sought to repeal Prop 209 and revive discrimination in government decision-making. And in 2022, the state legislature prop ...
Foundation for Economic Education : How a California tattoo artist beat public health officials who tried to deny her a permit
California tattoo artist Delia Fields is finally free to do what she loves. That's the good news. However, her story highlights the uneven—some would say arbitrary—constitutional protections enjoyed by some entrepreneurs but not others. The last few years haven't been easy for Delia. She lost everything she owned in the Camp Fire of 2018 exc ...
TJ alum calls admissions changes ‘a war on excellence’ in Washington Post
My colleagues and I have written many times about our Thomas Jefferson High School admissions case, but nothing we could write better captures what's at stake in the case than what Coalition for TJ member Hung Cao just wrote in The Washington Post. Cao is a TJ alum. A Vietnamese refugee who later became a Navy Special Operations officer, Cao bel ...
Emergency orders and the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’
Schoolchildren are not known for their patience. But sometimes they have good reason to want something not next year, not next month, but now. Such as when their futures are on the line before the Supreme Court. The slow Supreme Court process In normal circumstances, it takes more than a year for the Supreme Court to decide a case. The p ...
Parents file emergency request with Supreme Court in TJ admissions case
On March 31, the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to stay a February 25 district court ruling that the Fairfax County School Board violated the law in changing admissions requirements at the nation's top public high school. The district court judge had agreed with a coalition of concerned parents and community members who brought a ...
The Hill : Virginia court ruling a welcome sign in fight to end race-based school admissions
Will 2022 be the year we finally see an end to discriminatory racial preferences in education? There are welcome signs of change in the air. In February, parents of students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in northern Virginia racked up an important win in a federal lawsuit challenging the school's admissions poli ...
Restoring equality before the law — What the TJ victory means for education
In a ground-breaking decision, federal judge Claude Hilton ruled last Friday that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), the nation's top public school. In 2020, administrators decided to change the school's admissions policy from a mer ...
Digital nomads beware — living in Airbnbs can mean waiving your Fourth Amendment rights
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is a billionaire without a home: Chesky is one of many white-collar workers who decided to become "digital nomads" during the pandemic, living and working full-time in a series of short-term rentals in different cities. The growing trend has been a boon for Airbnb, which enjoyed its best year yet in 2021. "The pandemic ha ...