A federal judge has upheld the U.S. Naval Academy’s use of race in admissions practices, ruling that the school has “established a compelling national security interest” in championing diversity and inclusion within the military.
Friday’s decision deals a blow to Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the same group that challenged affirmative action at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. That case resulted in the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision, which banned race-based admissions at civilian universities. The question remained whether that ruling applied to military academies as well.
U.S. Senior District judge Richard Bennett of Maryland found that it did not, concluding that the “U.S. Naval Academy is distinct from a civilian university.”
“At bottom, the Court, considering all evidence before it, finds that the military’s interest in growing and maintaining a highly qualified and diverse officer corps is informed by history and learned experience, and that a highly qualified and diverse officer corps remains critical for military effectiveness and thus for national security,” Bennett wrote in the 179-page ruling.
“Plaintiff’s suggestion to the contrary contradicts decades of broad historical and military consensus,” Bennett added, rejecting SFFA’s legal challenge.
In its landmark ruling on affirmative action last year, the Supreme Court exempted the nation’s military academies — including West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy — from its purview. The Court left open the possibility that there are “potentially distinct interests that military academies may present” in the future, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a footnote of the majority opinion.
In addition to the Naval Academy, SFFA sued West Point. In February, the Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff’s request to immediately block West Point from using race in its admissions process while the legal challenge plays out.
In both lawsuits, the conservative group contended that the military academies’ penchant for considering race among applicants in promoting diversity is unconstitutional.
The Naval Academy in particular argued that a diverse officer corps is crucial to national security and that it is a “vital pipeline” to the officer corps. The judge agreed with that assessment.
“Defendants have proven that the Naval Academy’s limited use of race in admissions has increased the racial diversity of the Navy and Marine Corps, which has enhanced national security by improving the Navy and Marine Corps’ unit cohesion and lethality, recruitment and retention, and domestic and international legitimacy,” Bennett wrote.
Nonetheless, the judge said he “defers to the executive branch with respect to military personnel decisions” and that under the Constitution, the president makes those decisions.
Presuming Pete Hegseth remains president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense and gets confirmed by the Senate, Hegseth will likely do away with the military’s commitment to diversity.
“Either you’re in for warfighting and that’s it, that’s the only litmus test we care about,” Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show last month. “You’ve got to get DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and CRT [critical race theory] out of military academies so you’re not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking.”
Disappointed in Friday’s decision, SFFA plans on appealing it to the federal appeals court based in Richmond, Va., and, if that fails, the Supreme Court.
“It is our hope that the U.S. military academies ultimately will be compelled to follow the Supreme Court’s prohibition of race in college admissions,” SFFA president Edward Blum said in a statement.
The Naval Academy said it is reviewing the judge’s decision.
In a recent article for National Review, Senator Todd Young (R., Ind.), who graduated from the Naval Academy himself, argued race-based admissions practices at military service academies are discriminatory and in violation of the Constitution. Not to mention “it undermines military readiness at a time of rising threats to America’s safety from strategic competitors, rogue states, and terrorists,” Young wrote.
“As the new Trump administration takes office next year, our service academies should end the use of race-based admissions.”