Dive Brief:
- Students for Fair Admissions has dropped its lawsuits against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy over race-conscious admissions — practices that are no longer in effect at either institution under the Trump administration.
- Both academies axed admissions goals based on race, ethnicity and gender shortly after President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took office.
- SFFA had filed the lawsuits after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 sided with the anti-affirmative action group in its landmark ruling banning race-conscious admissions at colleges but allowed the practice to continue at military academies.
Dive Insight:
In a footnote to Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the case that ultimately ended decades of race-conscious admissions — the court said the decision did not address the practice at the nation’s military academies.
While no military academy had been party to the case, the court effectively created a carve-out for race-conscious admissions at the institutions “in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
In a friend-of-the-court brief to that case, the Biden administration wrote that “the Nation’s military strength and readiness depend on a pipeline of officers who are both highly qualified and racially diverse — and who have been educated in diverse environments that prepare them to lead increasingly diverse forces.”
After the ruling came down, SFFA soon filed legal challenges against military academies and their race-conscious admissions policies.
In its 2023 complaint against West Point, SFFA alleged, “Instead of admitting future cadets based on objective metrics and leadership potential, West Point focuses on race.”
The lawsuit further argued: “West Point has no justification for using race-based admissions.”
SFFA’s cases against West Point and the Air Force Academy, along with another one against the U.S. Naval Academy, were in progress when Trump retook the presidency in January.
The group quickly found it had an ideological ally in the new administration, whose policies reflect SFFA’s goals.
Hegseth banned race-based admissions at the nation’s military academies in January, days after being sworn in. In doing so, Trump’s defense secretary described diversity initiatives as “incompatible with the values of DoD,” adding that “the DoD will strive to provide merit-based, color-blind, equal opportunities to Service members but will not guarantee or strive for equal outcomes.”
Hegseth has gone much further than just rejecting race-conscious admissions at the academies. Under his leadership, the Pentagon ordered the military academies to purge hundreds of books from their libraries that deal with racism and gender issues, a move that has sparked outcry as well as lawsuits and at least one reversal.
In June, the Justice Department and SFFA asked that the group’s lawsuit against the Naval Academy be declared moot, after that institution dropped race-conscious admissions under Hegseth’s directive. The case was under appeal at the time, after a federal judge upheld the institution’s policies in December. In July, an appeals court dismissed the case in response to the request from SFFA and the Justice Department.
SFFA President Edward Blum said in a June statement, “We applaud this extraordinary accomplishment by the President and the Department of Defense which restores the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our military institutions.”
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