Ending Discrimination in K-12 Education
Education is often the key for students to unlock their potential, but discriminatory policies are denying students the chance for a quality education.
Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools.
Racially discriminatory policies are insidious and just the latest iteration of the long-rejected idea that race and sex ought to determine opportunity in America. All men are created equal, and every person is guaranteed equal protection of the laws.
As Chief Justice John Roberts rightly said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Pacific Legal Foundation fights to ensure that students aren’t denied a quality education because of their race or sex.
Of Note
COALITION FOR TJ V. FAIRFAX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD
PLF asks Supreme Court to hear Thomas Jefferson High School case
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology—commonly referred to as TJ—is the top-ranked public high school in the nation. For decades, admission to TJ was merit-based and race-blind, which meant TJ provided many low-income, minority, and immigrant students an opportunity they didn’t have elsewhere: the opportunity to attend a top school regardless of their family’s income, race, or status. But even though the majority of TJ’s student body were minorities, the school board and superintendent decided they were the wrong kind of minority. TJ scrapped the admissions test and implemented a system designed to admit fewer Asian American students and more black and Hispanic students. Represented by PLF, TJ students and families are fighting to end the new discriminatory admissions system and re-implement race-blind admissions. Read more.
“All men are created equal” is the American ideal that promises the government will treat each individual equally.
- After decades of slavery and a Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all Americans “equal protection of the laws.” But the Supreme Court took another 75 years to recognize that “separate is inherently unequal,” and even after that, schoolhouse doors were blockaded for students of the wrong color. It took civil rights laws, the federal courts, and untold thousands of freedom fighters to end the reign of the segregationists.
- Today, however, public schools are reintroducing race-based policies designed to admit or deny students’ educational opportunities based on their race. Often undertaken in the name of diversity or equity, school districts are designing admissions policies to reach the right “balance” of races in school.
PLF has successfully defeated discriminatory K-12 policies across the country.
- World-class magnet schools in Hartford, Connecticut, are no longer turning away black and Hispanic students and leaving seats empty to fill racial quotas for white students.
- Middle schools and high schools can no longer prevent male dancers from joining school dance teams because competitive dance is deemed a “girls sport.”
But schools across the country are implementing discriminatory policies.
- School districts are fighting hard to inject racial discrimination back into school admissions decisions and school operations.
- Universities are cutting men’s athletics programs in a misguided effort to “equalize” participation between men and women. Individual student athletes are paying the price.
Cases
August 21, 2023
New York Times: Supreme Court Is Asked to Hear a New Admissions Case on Race
Parents, backed by a legal foundation, say admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia are not truly “race neutral.”
August 16, 2023 | By JOHN SWEENEY
Wall Street Journal: How Schools Flout the Supreme Court’s Affirmative-Action Ruling
Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark June ruling that Harvard and the University of North Carolina were guilty of discriminating against Asian-Americans, some were confident schools would find a…
July 13, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS
Law & Liberty: Is It Time to Stop Asking About Race?
We’ve all checked the boxes on race and ethnicity questionnaires, a staple of most government applications and surveys, and they have never made much sense. On ethnicity, they ask whether you are “His…
July 7, 2023 | By ERIN WILCOX
The Messanger: High School Lawsuit Offers Preview of Life After Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court has ended affirmative action as we knew it with its decision in the Students for Fair Admissions cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
January 17, 2022 | By ERIN WILCOX
The Hill: The parents were right
Coauthored by Asra Q. Nomani, vice president of the grassroots organization Parents Defending Education and cofounder of Coalition for TJ, which advocates for diversity and excellence at Thomas Jeffer…
September 13, 2023 | By ERIN WILCOX
Can colleges still use race in admissions?
It’s a brave new world out there for college admissions officers. Gone are the days when they could use racial stereotypes as a stand-in for an applicant’s personal qualities or deduct points for being Asian American. When the Supreme Court finally put an end to these racist and unconstitutional admissions practices in June, it left …
June 20, 2023 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
"Seeing only race is the essence of racism," an address by CACAGNY Charter President Wai Wah Chin
The following is a transcript from Wai Wah Chin’s speech at Pacific Legal Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. National Portrait Gallery, March 23, 2023. All our lives matter. But what matters in life? Let me speak about one life, that of Roald Hoffman. Roald was a Jewish boy in Poland during the Holocaust. Most of his …
October 28, 2022 | By ERIN WILCOX
Education officials spread poisonous myth that Asian students are ‘test-taking robots'
Envy: a feeling of resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck “I walked into Stuyvesant High school and I thought I was in Chinatown,” Milady Baez, then-deputy chancellor of the Department of Education in New York City, complained to colleagues at a 2018 meeting. Baez’ point was clear: There were, in her …
September 15, 2022 | By NICOLE W.C. YEATMAN
Oral arguments in Coalition for TJ are today. Here are 5 things you should know.
For Northern Virginia families hoping to send their kids to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology—the top-ranked public high school in the country—today (September 16) is a big day. That’s when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board to determine whether …
April 21, 2022 | By GLENN ROPER
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 …
April 08, 2022 | By GLENN ROPER
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 …
March 02, 2022 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
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 merit- …
January 24, 2022 | By BRITTANY HUNTER
You think higher ed’s discriminatory admissions policies are bad? Just wait until you hear about K-12
Today, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. The crux of the case rests in the question: Should racial preferences in university admissions be legal? Harvard officials think so, as is evidenced by its own admissions …
January 24, 2022 | By JOSEPH KAST
Thomas Jefferson High School becomes an arena for the battle between parents and policy
**This article appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of Pacific Legal Foundation’s quarterly magazine, Sword&Scales** The large auditorium was mostly empty when the Fairfax County School Board held its public hearing in May. Schools had been closed for much of the school year and Fairfax’s indoor mask mandate was still in effect. Seven …