Supreme Court won’t review admissions at Va.’s Thomas Jefferson school

The Supreme Court will not review a challenge to the admissions system for a prestigious Northern Virginia magnet school, ending a years-long legal battle in the case and signaling a majority of justices may not be ready to quickly revisit the issue of what role race can play in the selection of a student body.

The high court’s decision Tuesday not to take the case involving the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology follows its ruling last term rejecting race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. That historic decision rolled back decades of precedent and has dramatically changed how the nation’s private and public universities select their students.

Tuesday’s ruling also comes weeks after the Supreme Court refused to immediately force the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to change its race-conscious admissions policies, an issue it left open after the cases last summer.

“I think the Supreme Court is where the American public is,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg of George Washington University, an expert witness in favor of socioeconomic admissions who testified on behalf of the group that successfully challenged the Harvard and UNC practices.

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