US Supreme Court rejects Virginia case over race in high school admissions

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a chance to further restrict efforts to promote diversity in education, turning away an appeal by a coalition of parents and students who argued that an elite Virginia public school's revised admissions policy racially discriminates against Asian Americans.

The justices left in place a lower court's ruling rejecting the claim by the plaintiffs that the admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology violates the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment equal protection guarantee. Asian Americans make up the majority of students at the school located in the Washington suburb of Alexandria.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision to deny hearing the case.

The court's 6-3 conservative majority last June in a landmark ruling rejected race-conscious college and university admissions policies long used to raise the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on campus.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)