For now, the U.S. Supreme Court has chosen not to intervene in a race-based admissions policy implemented at one of the nation’s highly esteemed military academies.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, justices “on Friday rejected a conservative student group’s efforts to force the U.S Military Academy at West Point to cease its race-based admissions policies, saying that the case is still ‘underdeveloped’ in lower court proceedings.”
In an order, the nation’s highest court wrote: “The application for writ of injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied. The record before this Court is underdeveloped, and this order should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question.”
Students For Fair Admissions submitted a petition to West Point, urging them to stop considering race in student applications. This petition comes after their successful 6-3 victory in a previous case before the justices. The Supreme Court had ruled that affirmative action was not in line with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, as reported by the Examiner.
In response to a request from SFFA, the Biden administration addressed the issue on Tuesday, urging the Supreme Court to continue supporting affirmative action policies at the school.
“For more than forty years, our Nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative and that achieving that diversity requires limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote on behalf of the Justice Department.
Conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, leading the organization SFFA, recently submitted a request to the justices in an effort to prevent West Point from considering race in its admissions process. SFFA argued that military academies should follow the same standard set by the Supreme Court’s decision against Harvard University’s race-based practices. The request was made just before the application deadline for West Point’s class of 2028, with SFFA urging the justices to resolve the dispute before that date. The decision announced on Friday suggests that the school will be permitted to consider race to some extent for the upcoming class.
In September, Blum’s organization took legal action in federal court in New York, seeking an order from a district court judge to temporarily prohibit the school from considering race while the litigation continued. However, U.S. District Judge Philip Halpern rejected this request, stating that SFFA essentially wanted to force military academies to significantly change and restructure their admissions process, which had been in place for many years. Judge Halpern also noted that the student group failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success, a crucial factor in obtaining temporary relief.
Last summer, when the Supreme Court invalidated affirmative action policies at private and state institutions, it included a footnote in the opinion stating that military academies were not addressed in the case. This footnote played a role in the government’s argument for why the justices should refrain from ruling against race-based practices at 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,” said the footnote.
The lawsuits filed against Harvard and the University of North Carolina resulted in the high court’s ruling in June, which invalidated affirmative action in college admissions.
“The high court sided with the conservative nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions, which argued that the universities’ admissions processes discriminate against white and Asian American applicants,” Axios reported.
