Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced his office found FCPS violated the Virginia Human Rights Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. During a press conference at the Korean Community Center surrounded by parents, Miyares said the case is being referred to the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Discrimination is wrong,” Miyares said. “When that discrimination comes from those entrusted to educate our children and uphold the law, it is especially troubling.”
The Fairfax County district’s new policy in 2020 replaced standardized testing and GPA as admissions criteria at the prestigious high school, known locally as TJ, with a “holistic review,” evaluating students on essays and other “experience factors.” Asian American representation among admitted students fell from 73% to 54% in a single year after the new policy’s implementation. This occurred despite the county increasing the number of spots available at TJ by 64.
“That was not a coincidence,” Miyares said. “That was absolutely the intended outcome. This was not about expanding opportunity. It was about excluding and eliminating based on race.”
The investigation brought to light internal emails and text messages among school board members confirming that lowering the Asian population at the school was their intended outcome.
In messages released by the Attorney General’s Office, Fairfax County School Board members admitted:
● that “there has been an anti asian feel underlying some of this, hate to say it lol,”
● that Asian students were “discriminated against in this process,”
● that the Superintendent “[c]ame right out of the gate blaming Asian students.”
● that they knew the proposal would “whiten our schools and kick ou[t] Asians.”
● and that “Asians hate us.”
“I’m outraged,” Miyares said. “These are not words of fringe actors. These are not people just mouthing off on the internet. These are the words of the decision makers inside our public education system that’s supposed to represent all of us. They knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing was wrong. And yet they did it anyway.”
Fairfax County Public Schools also hired an equity consultant from California. At the price tag of $455,000 of taxpayer money for just nine months of work, the consultant built a “new equity based standard” at the school. The consultant advised FCPS to pursue the goal of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception” and advised “purposefully unequal” action.
“What this board did was pit one race against another,” Miyares said. “Manipulating the system to produce their desired racial makeup, even if it meant hurting one group of students, even if it meant to treat some students purposefully unequal.”
Asra Nomani, the co-founder of the Coalition for TJ, told the Washington Examiner that the Fairfax County School Board decided to target Asian American families and students as scapegoats for their failed policies.
“They removed the merit admissions test, and we, the parents, stood up,” Nomani said. “This was a fight for America, because the war on merit is ultimately dumbing down the United States of America.”
“We are mostly immigrant parents who used education as the great equalizer that it’s been for generations in the United States,” added Nomani, who is an immigrant from India who started the Coalition for TJ in 2020 when the new policy was put in place.
Nomani told Washington Examiner the parents in the coalition didn’t survive the Cultural Revolution, economic hardships, and communism to experience blatant racism against Asian families and students.
In announcing the results of the state investigation, Miyares noted that TJ already had a minority majority student body, but said school officials “determined it was the wrong minority.”
Nomani credited Miyares with bringing life to their fight.
“We hope the Trump administration will follow up on its decision to stand up for merit and basically hold Fairfax County Public Schools accountable for its blatant anti-Asian racism,” she added.
Miyares stated both state and federal law are clear that students cannot be treated differently because of their race.
The Trump administration has taken aim at schools that use race as a factor in hiring or educational decisions in violation of civil rights laws. It has opened investigations of and threatened to withhold funding from universities and schools that it says illegally discriminates against white or Jewish students.
