Judge Richard Bennett decided not to temporarily block the Naval Academy’s use of race in admissions.
Students for Fair Admissions ended race-based university admissions earlier this year in its cases against Harvard and North Carolina on behalf of Asian students.
But as Jim explained, the case has a footnote: the ruling does not apply to military academies.
SFAA brought a lawsuit against the Naval Academy and West Point in November, which Jim also wrote about. The group claims the academy “has no justification for using race-based admissions.”
Based in Baltimore, Bennett said “that Students for Fair Admissions had not sufficiently shown that its case would likely succeed against the military school.”
From Politico:
Multiple times during the hearing, which ran more than two hours, Bennett was combative with the lawyers representing SFFA, a group whose lawsuits essentially dismantled race-conscious affirmative action in higher education earlier this year before the Supreme Court. He also called a preliminary injunction against the Naval Academy an “extraordinary remedy.”
SFFA lawyers said they may appeal the preliminary injunction, something Bennett warned against, saying there are important issues to unearth in discovery.
“This case will stop dead under the water,” Bennett said, adding that if the circuit court reverses his decision, the case will be “frozen.”
Bennett agreed to publish “an opinion on the merits” within a week. He also told the lawyers that “he was willing to work quickly.”
Bennett also dashed the hopes of the government by not buying its argument “that SFFA lacked standing over its use of unnamed member plaintiffs looking to end race-based affirmative action in one of the last places it’s permitted in higher education.”
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It’s the Navy’s maritime safety plan to mark all sandbars with grounded ships.
So a federal judge can somehow authorize the violation of law?
Of course. They’ve been doing it for decades.
When the law is the will of those in power . . . yes.
In passing, when younger my career ambitions involved the Naval Academy. With grades, the help of my local recruiters who gave me the [pre-ASVAB] Navy Basic Battery test then given to all new Navy recruits before I entered high school, in which I scored in the top 5% of high school graduates, and by working with a Colorado Senator and his staff, I was told that if I passed the formal entrance test, I had a nomination to Annapolis sewed up. That ended when my father bought a business in another state which moved us out of the Senator’s ability to nominate me.
Now, I look at Annapolis and I have a feeling we are going to lose the naval [and probably others too] side of any future war.
Subotai Bahadur
I bypassed all of that protocol and was immediately granted the advanced position of Seaman Apprentice.
Sorry. Seaman Recruit. Took six weeks to make Apprentice. God only knows what kind of officer I might have been. Another Hornblower? Or Blood?
You’re begging the question. Who says the law is being violated? That’s what the suit is about. The plaintiffs say the discrimination is against the law; the military says it isn’t. The Supreme Court specifically said it hadn’t considered the question and was expressing no opinion on it.
You don’t get an automatic injunction just by claiming that something is illegal! As the judge said, injunctions are the exception, not the rule. The rule is that the existing practice can continue until and unless the court finds it to be illegal.
Oh Dead God…
Figures that you’d be so ignorant as to think you can get an injunction against anything just by complaining about it.
Weird…. The Left does it ALL….THE…..TIME…. without even breaking a sweat
Thank you. I concur.
I know it’s so tiresome…. Milhouse always white knights for evil… while focusing on a misplaced comma to try to destroy anything good.
Actually, unlike most of the commenters here who are reactionary knuckleheads, Milhouse explains the law to you. You are all too ignorant to understand it.
“Actually, unlike most of the commenters here who are reactionary knuckleheads, Milhouse explains the law to you. You are all too ignorant to understand it.”
Millhouse doesn’t KNOW the law, and it’s only simps like you, fawning over these overt displays of ignorance, that keep him going.
I respect his opinions simply because he does not insert the “feelz” into them. He simply discusses the legal principles involved.
“Always white knights for evil”? Really?!
The military operates outside of the standard laws of the US. In fact, it has it’s own judicial system. I think what the judge is doing is trying to keep the case open for full disclosure on the governments part. It doesn’t sound to me like he is impressed in West Point keeping race based admissions but want’s the process to keep moving instead of going through endless appeals which could tie it up for years.
He says that if an appeals court imposes an injunction on race based admissions, he’ll freeze this case? Fine. Then that injunction will stay in place and race based admissions will end.
No, he says if they appeal his decision not to grant the injunction he’ll freeze the case until the appeal is decided.
Which could take who knows how long. He seems to want it to move and was warning the lawyers what would happen if they appeal.
So it’s supposedly unconstitutional for non-government institutions to use race-based admissions (except we all know they have created clever semantic games to work around the ban), but the government isn’t subject to the same rule. If the government doesn’t follow the same rules it imposes on the people, that’s an indicator of tyranny.
No, you have this completely wrong. It’s unconstitutional for government institutions to use race-based admissions. It’s illegal (but not unconstitutional) for private institutions that take federal money to do so. But the supreme court specifically said this may not apply to the military academies. That question was not before it, so it could not consider it and its decision does not apply to them. It explicitly expressed no opinion on the matter. Hence the current case.
Actually the earlier Supreme Court decision stated that it was unconstitutional to use race-based admissions in Harvard (a private institution) and in UNC (a government institution).
The military academies were left out, not just because “they are a horse of another color”, but because the military has always been considered a special case where its effectiveness in operating in defense of the country overrides typical civilian laws such as OSHA. It is very likely that the current case under discussion will propagate to the Supreme Court where it will be resolved.
Other than the military, it is very rare to find a category of situations where race-based treatment is allowed. Public Accommodations doctrine means you can’t discriminate based on race at restaurants or hotels or other places where the general public is invited to participate.
It’s insane that in 21-century America, the issue of whether it’s Constitutionally permissible to evaluate people based on racial criteria and considerations still needs to be litigated.
If the federal judiciary had had more clear-thinking and more sage minds, this issue would have been settled decades ago, in the 1970’s, or, at the latest, by the 1980’s.
Clear thinking and sage minds are concepts that do not belong in the same sentence with federal judiciary.
Except to a couple of Justices on the Scotus. Hat off to Mr Justice Thomas.
Jim B, JD
Justices Thomas and Alito, being the couple you refer to, as far as SCOTUS is concerned. There are other judges on the federal bench who respect the U.S. Constitution and who understand the role of judicial humility and restraint, but, they are a rare breed, indeed.
I think you are too pessimistic. I think the courts have done a lot to mitigate the damage of the Biden administration.