Federal Court Rules U.S. Naval Academy Can Consider Race in Admissions
Judge holds diversity is a compelling national security interest and therefore rules that considering race in Naval Academy admissions does not violate the U.S. Constitution
In late September, we reported on the recently completed bench, non-jury trial in federal court in Maryland where the issue was whether the U.S. Naval Academy could consider an applicant’s race during the admissions process: Naval Academy Affirmative Action Trial Concludes, Judge’s Ruling Expected in November:
[T]he trial went more than eight full days, an eternity in federal court, and the trial was completed on Thursday, September 26, as reported in the Baltimore Banner: The Naval Academy’s affirmative action trial is over. What’s next?
The future of the U.S. Naval Academy’s admissions process is now in the hands of a federal judge.
After a nearly two-week-long trial in a Baltimore district courtroom, Judge Richard Bennett will weigh whether the Annapolis-based military school will be allowed to continue considering race when selecting students — a practice it has said is already very limited. Students for Fair Admissions, the group that won landmark cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina last year, sued the Naval Academy, alleging that its efforts to boost minority enrollment discriminate against white applicants and violate their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection.
Bennett, appointed to the bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush, said he would likely issue a decision within six to seven weeks — early to mid-November. An appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could follow.
I would modify the last statement to say that an appeal to the Fourth Circuit will follow. And there will be the inevitable request for the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.
Remember that in the Harvard case, now memorialized as Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, held:
[W]e have permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and—at some point—they must end. Respondents’ admissions systems—however well intentioned and implemented in good faith—fail each of these criteria. They must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
***
For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.
All good, except for footnote 4 of the opinion:
The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s military academies. No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.
So the Harvard ruling that colleges could not consider race in admissions did not apply to the service academies, which led to lawsuits against the Naval Academy and West Point. The case in Maryland finished first, with Judge Bennett, as mentioned, promising a ruling by early-to-mid November.
Well, the judge was a little overly optimistic in expecting to get his ruling out by then, as it just issued yesterday, December 6.
From Reuters: US judge upholds Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions policies:
A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy may continue to consider race when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, even after the U.S. Supreme Court last year barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies.
U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett in Baltimore rejected arguments by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, that the Annapolis, Maryland-based Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions program was unconstitutional.
The decision marked a victory for outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, which had argued that senior military leaders had long recognized that a scarcity of minority officers could create distrust within the armed forces, which were racially segregated until 1948.
Blum in a statement said the group was disappointed by the ruling and planned to appeal, first to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if unsuccessful there, the U.S. 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,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Naval Academy, which trains officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps, said it was aware of the ruling and was reviewing it.
The ruling can be reviewed here, and at the end of this post.
I have not completed my review of the behemoth 179-page opinion, but I would pause to note that the U.S. Supreme Court, as they explained in Students for Fair Admissions, specifically as Justice Thomas pointed out in his concurrence, diversity is not a compelling interest justifying racial discrimination: “[J]ust as the alleged educational benefits of segregation were insufficient to justify racial discrimination [in the 1950s], see Brown v. Board of Education, the alleged educational benefits of diversity cannot justify racial discrimination today.”
So Judge Bennett, in the face of that guidance, said diversity supporting national security is a compelling interest. I cannot imagine SCOTUS going for that, and I officially predict that after the Fourth Circuit federal court of appeals affirms Judge Bennett’s order, that the Supreme Court will reverse and outlaw racial discrimination in service academy admissions.
From our friends at X:
I don't care if every person who wears a military uniform is white. Or if they're all black. Or purple or glittering gold. I just want them all to be good at killing people and breaking their things. That's the only reason we have the military. https://t.co/uoANXnYy6L
— Rex_Tudor_Coup (@iamgnurr) December 7, 2024
lowering standards increases competence and other absolute drivel from our muddle-headed judiciary…https://t.co/oUfsoHLZZD via @dcexaminer
— 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐠𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐢 (@sjgiardini) December 6, 2024
Even the great Brit Hume weighs in:
Some judges still trying to find ways to allow racial discrimination. This one acts as if Supreme Court rulings do not apply to service academies. Hard to believe this will stand. https://t.co/K6T39RWDrI
— Brit Hume (@brithume) December 7, 2024
And others:
The @NavalAcademy has a federal judge protect its race quota admissions process
DEI is alive and well in @DeptofDefense
Your skin color matters to @SecDef , @SECNAV , @USNavyCNO https://t.co/3oBxJMveqm
— NOVA Campaigns (@NoVA_Campaigns) December 6, 2024
The @NavalAcademy should be embarrassed. Unless I’m missing something, this should get overturned at the Supreme Court, considering they’ve already ruled this is unconstitutional, but federal judges still feel the need to be activists. https://t.co/hcEBeonQjC
— @Matthew Betley (@MatthewBetley) December 7, 2024
These policies are blatant discrimination. Our military needs to focus on our national defense, not race.https://t.co/Zfet77ga4v
— Hung Cao (@HungCao_VA) December 7, 2024
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Comments
“Naval Academy can consider race in admissions.”
Consider? Does that mean fairly? Equally? Does iit mean they look at each applicant’s background and consider each race as equally valid and worthy? No, it means that the color one applicant’s skin is more important than another’s and that, all things being equal, the one with darker skin will have a better chance of admission.
Yes, but aren’t there some black applicants who come from a life of privilege and some white disadvantaged ones? Are you crazy? That’s absurd!
Well, what about yellow skinned people? Ha, you gotta be kidding me! Black rules the day, baby!
“Judge holds diversity is a compelling national security interest and therefore rules that considering race in Naval Academy admissions does not violate the U.S. Constitution.”
JUDGE: Without AA and DEI, who’s gonna fly our jets into the aft end of our carriers, or fail to catch one of a carrier’s three tailhooks, or ground a naval vessel in shallow water?
That’s right: no one. We need that kind of diversity which will strength our national security.
“after the Fourth Circuit federal court of appeals affirms Judge Bennett’s order”
If the Supreme Court was clear, the 4th Circuit may and should adhere and reverse this activist judge.
But the Supreme Court wasn’t clear. It explicitly said its ruling did not cover military academies, and that there were issues that would have to be considered in any challenge to them.
The Students for Fair Admissions holding guides the matter, notwithstanding that military academies were excluded by a footnote.
“So Judge Bennett, in the face of that guidance, said diversity supporting national security is a compelling interest. I cannot imagine SCOTUS going for that.”
If so, the circuit court MAY AND SHOULD adhere and reverse this activist judge, rather than force the issue further up the line. That was the point, in response to the declaration the circuit court would affirm.
If you mean merely that you would like the 4th circuit to reverse, I would like that too, but it’s not going to happen.
But the judge was not being an activist, and if you mean that as a matter of law the circuit should reverse then I disagree.
No, the Students for Fair Admissions holding doesn’t guide the matter. The Court explicitly recognized that there are issues in the case of the military academies that were not argued before it, and that might well justify a racist admission policy. The academy just made that very argument to the district court, which accepted them as was completely open to it to do. The 4th is going to accept them too; we know that. Then it goes to SCOTUS and we don’t know what it will do. It will hear the arguments and consider them. Maybe it will reject them and reverse, and maybe it won’t. It depends entirely on the strength of the arguments, which neither of us have heard or considered.
Got better stuff to do than argue with someone that misinterprets, then tells you what you mean, over the most insignificant things.
Well it’s probably going there regardless
Brit Hume’s comment is plain ignorant or dishonest.
The Supreme Court explicitly said exactly that.
Whether you think the judge’s decision was right or wrong, one thing is certain: It does not conflict with the Supreme Court decision.
Same thing with Matthew Betley’s tweet: “Considering they’ve already ruled this is unconstitutional.” No, they haven’t. They explicitly said they were not ruling that.
If the academies fully consider race, then there will be no non-whites admitted.
Are you stupid or just randomly trolling?
Just a race realist. You should really read up on intelligence. Start with The Bell Curve. If it were not so these lawsuits you seem to support would not exist.
Your argument is both ignorant and foolish. You apparently have no idea what a Bell Curve means. Shut up and go away.
I know that old black bell is one standard deviation to the left of the white bell, which makes its far right tail’s IQs vanishingly small compared to white’s. That’s the whole reason for affirmative action. You want your cake and eat it too. Make up your mind -approve of affirmative action or face reality.
You are wasting your time arguing this because society has reached a point where facts and science no longer matter. Charles Murray wrote the book, “The Bell Curve” to show the lower average IQ of blacks and did it to help schools and educators to understand that blacks needed a different type of teaching from whites and Asians. He was trashed just like you are being trashed and called a bigot and a racist. He is a hard-core liberal who only wanted to help the average blacks learn better. As an old Marine captain, I think it is deplorable to make a person an officer who was not smart enough to attain it on his own and then expect others to follow him/her. Combat is not the time to discover your mistakes.
Yes
DEI, Affirmative crap has to go. Our military is in sorry shape now, in large part because of this.
unless things have changed in the last 40 years, the candidates are nominated by the members of congress, the only exception are the children of Medal of Honor Awardees, the are granted automatic entrance.
There are several steps. An interview, SAT’s or ACT scores, nomination by a State Congressman or Senator etc. A friend of mine in high school went to West Point. His father was a State Police Captain, a very good person not found much anymore in our law enforcement unfortunately, who knew our State Senator and got him to write a letter of recommendation. My buddy was very qualified both physically and academically. He still didn’t get accepted
BTW, you are correct. MOH recipients do have their dependents automatically accepted to our Service Academies provided they meet the qualifications.
I suspect that for at least the next four years the issue will be moot given that DJT will be at the helm. That may give Congress an opportunity to weigh-in.
Of course, higher courts will opine. But, meanwhile, could our new defense secretary direct the academies not to consider race while under appeal?
I would think that the defense of our nation is the ultimate compelling national interest. DEI is nice at the Dairy Queen but not so much on the battlefield. The military is the ultimate colorblind institution where you gain rank by shear competence. Nothing more. Can you command men in the ultimate high pressure situation or not? I had NCO’s and officers of all races I’d follow out the door 1,250 feet up and a number that no one could figure out how they got there.
“Judge holds diversity is a compelling national security interest”
One that apparently escaped the notice of 200 years of state and US governments.
Au contraire, through many of those years, the diverse — especially the “sexually diverse” — were considered a national security threat.
Not saying that’s the right call, just saying don’t gaslight us about history and the interests of national security, which are at best neutral on this issue.
Is a person who flouts gender norms more or less inclined to flout moral norms? And by that I’m not at all talking about what they do in their bedrooms or dungeons, but what they do in, say, airport baggage claims?
One thing we can count on is that the woke 4th Circuit will affirm. They view their mission as to produce leftist-friendly outcomes at every opportunity.
This is true, regardless of the merits of this case. I don’t know what the right decision is, but I know what the 4th circuit is going to say. There will be no fair hearing, the result is predetermined.
When it gets to the Supreme Court all I know is that it will get a fair hearing and both sides’ arguments will get fair consideration by at least 6 justices. I don’t know how they will decide.
Sink the Navy, DIE hires are not the cream of the crop
haven’t started reading the opinion, but why would it take 179 pages to justify a basic yes / no call.
Because it isn’t a basic yes/no call. It’s a complicated question, one the Supreme Court explicitly set aside as too complicated to consider in the Students for Fair Admissions case. There are potential arguments that may justify a racist admission policy in the armed forces, and the Court acknowledged that.
This is due to the SCOTUS’s poor ruling by not addressing military academies the first time. I could not understand why they thought the military was a place for unearned rank when lives may depend on the leaders.
Because there are serious potential arguments that can be made for that, and the military maintains that it is necessary for the national defense, but none of those arguments could be made in that case because none of the defendants were military academies. So the court noted that that issue was not heard and remains open. If this case progresses there, then that will be an opportunity for the military to make its case and for the court to consider it.
Please explain how having diversity instead of quality enhances national security?
The argument, which the armed forces have held for at least 50 years if not 70, is that racial diversity in the officer corps promotes cohesion in the forces, and thus morale. This is a reasonable and plausible theory, and the forces may well have statistics to back it up; or not. It’s never been tested in court, because there’s never been a need to do so. Now it will have to be tested, and SCOTUS will consider the merits of the arguments on both sides and reach a verdict. It explicitly refused to prejudge the issue without hearing those arguments, and we should do the same.
A Bush Jr judge.
I am waiting for someone, ANYONE to articulate, not simply assert, just why diversity of skin color is critical for our national defense, or any other purpose.
Is anyone else bothered by the reasoning of this ruling? If “national security” is all important then the constitution is null and void.
National security is the whole point of having armed forces in the first place. Within the armed forces, the needs to have an efficient, disciplined, and cohesive force routinely overrides soldiers’ ordinary civil liberties.
For instance servicemen do not have the same first amendment protections as normal people do. They can’t criticize officers, or the president. In Goldman v Weinberger SCOTUS held that the need for “instinctive obedience, unity, commitment, and esprit de corps” meant that the military can dictate arbitrary uniform requirements and these override servicemen’s right to the free exercise of religion.
For the same reason, it is reasonable for the military to decide that it’s vital to have a racially diverse officer corps, and never go back to the days when black soldiers were always commanded by white officers. Servicemen have to be used to obeying officers of all races, and officers themselves need to be comfortable with colleagues of all races. And to achieve that the academies need to put a thumb on the scale and admit more black candidates and fewer white ones than they would otherwise do.
It’s not an implausible argument. The armed forces must be given a chance to make their case and have it be honestly considered. And there hasn’t yet been an opportunity for that. It couldn’t happen in the last case, because none of the defendants were military. So there needs to be a new case over it.
Consider another example: If any normal university, government or private, were to turn down applicants because they’re physically disabled, it would violate the ADA, and in the case of government schools the 14th amendment. There’s no reason why someone in a wheelchair shouldn’t be able to study physics, so a government school would have no valid reason for excluding them.
But the military academies have physical exams before admission, and don’t admit people whose physical condition won’t allow them to serve. And that’s obviously acceptable, because the entire purpose of the academies is to produce military officers. So the military’s needs override requirements for equal treatment
And yet the military doesn’t need less qualified applicants because of their skin color. The idea was, all things being equal, your skin color wouldn’t be a reason to reject an applicant. That’s been stood on its head for years now.
The military disagrees. It says that it’s a vital requirement for the national defense that a sufficient number of officers be black, and if it has to put a thumb on the scales to achieve that then that’s what it has to do. That argument needs to be heard and considered by a court.