The Supreme Court on Monday turned away cases on admissions policies, gender identity and gun control, eliciting objections from conservative justices that suggested rifts on the court about whether and when to address major questions left open by recent decisions.
The cases involved challenges to admissions plans at three elite Boston public schools, to a Wisconsin school district’s policy on informing parents about students’ gender transitions and to a Hawaii gun law.
Four conservative justices, in dissents and statements, indicated that the court should work faster to address questions raised by recent decisions on race-conscious admissions in higher education and the Second Amendment, as well as ones sure to be prompted when a case argued on Wednesday, on gender transition care for minors, is decided next year.
As is its custom, the court gave no reasons for declining to grant review in all three cases.
The Boston case resembled one from Virginia that the court turned down in February. In both, parents challenged changes to admissions criteria at public schools that did not directly take account of race in trying to diversify enrollment. Whether such indirect efforts are constitutional is a question left open by the court’s decision last year striking down the admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College.
In Boston, school officials replaced admissions criteria based on grades and test scores with one that largely allocated seats across ZIP codes based on grades within each. Under the new standards, the share of Black students grew to 23 percent from 14 percent while the share of white students dropped to 31 percent from 40 percent.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented. The schools’ plan, he wrote, “is racial balancing by another name and is undoubtedly unconstitutional.”
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