An anti-racism policy in Albemarle County Public Schools will remain in place after the Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear families’ arguments challenging the initiative.
The decision puts an end to a lawsuit filed in December 2021 by five families who wanted to nix a new curriculum encouraging students to challenge values that perpetuate systemic racism. Despite the county’s goal to combat discrimination, the parents alleged the policy created a racially hostile educational environment and violated students’ free-speech rights.
“Instead, the policy defined students by their race, sought to ‘expose whiteness,’ and taught students that endorsing a concept like ‘colorblindness’ or taking the wrong position on school funding is racist and leads to lynching and genocide,” the lawsuit read. “Unsurprisingly, the policy had deleterious effects on students.”
The families, led by Carlos and Tatiana Ibañez, urged Virginia’s top court to hear their case in March, arguing the Virginia Court of Appeals was wrong to determine they could not show that their children were harmed by the policy.
The Ibañezes, who are from Panama, said in their appeal that the impacts of ACPS’s curriculum have already occurred. The school’s new curriculum, the filing said, led their daughter to believe her achievements in life will be determined by her racial background, not how hard she works.
Melissa Riley said her son — who is Native American and white on his mother’s side, and Black on his father’s — recently began viewing his biracial heritage negatively and making jokes about being Black.
Two other families named in the lawsuit added they’ve incurred significant costs as a result of the school board’s policy because they felt forced to withdraw their students from public school, according to their court filings. They now pay about $30,000 a year in private school tuition, they said.
A Virginia Supreme Court panel refused to grant the families’ petition after hearing oral arguments in August, which would have allowed the full court to hear the case.
The Ibañez family, along with seven other parents and eight students, sued the Albemarle County School Board, Superintendent Matthew S. Haas and retired Assistant Superintendent Bernard Hairston.
They said the school board’s decision to implement the anti-racism policy in 2019 violated students’ state constitutional right to be free from race discrimination, viewpoint discrimination and compelled speech.
The Circuit Court of Albemarle County threw out the case in April 2022, and the Virginia Court of Appeals doubled down on that decision this February.
A three-judge panel on the appeals court said the families didn’t have standing to bring these claims because they had not shown that they were actually harmed by the anti-racism policy. Though the families alleged the school district taught that different racial groups have different experiences, they failed to show that students were treated differently because of their backgrounds, the panel said.
For example, the families said teachers taught students that white culture is “dominant,” and they should “break the box” of this concept. However, the court said, the families did not put forward any evidence showing ACPS took any action against white students or treated them differently in any way.
“Perhaps the policy and curriculum could lead to a future circumstance where ACPS treats an individual student differently based on their race or religion—but at this point the concern is only speculative,” the panel said.
Counsel for ACPS and the families declined to comment, and a representative for the superintendent’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
