The Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to take up a case challenging a Virginia high school’s efforts to promote diversity in education, rejecting an appeal by a coalition of parents of students who say a Virginia public school’s admissions policy racially discriminates against Asian Americans.

Despite a forceful dissent by Republican-appointed Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the majority of the court left in place a lower court’s ruling rejecting the claim by the plaintiffs that admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.