Supreme Court Allows West Point’s Race-Conscious Admissions Policy to Continue for Now By Brittany Bernstein
The Supreme Court will allow West Point to continue considering race as part of its admissions decisions as a lawsuit over the policy plays out.
On Friday, the Court rejected an emergency appeal that sought to axe the inclusion of race-conscious admissions as the military academy makes admissions decisions for its Class of 2028.
The unsigned order said the decision “should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question.”
The lawsuit comes after West Point and other military academies were left out of the Court’s ruling in June that ended affirmative action in admissions at other colleges.
The Court ruled then that the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the six-justice majority that, “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.”
The majority wrote in a footnote that no military academies were included in the lawsuits and that lower courts had not addressed “the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context,” and neither did the Supreme Court because of the “potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
The group behind the suits against Harvard and North Carolina filed a legal challenge against West Point’s admissions policy in September and the U.S. Naval Academy in October. The Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy consider race in their admissions as well.
“Every day that passes between now and then is one where West Point, employing an illegal race-based admissions process, can end another applicant’s dream of joining the Long Gray Line,” lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions wrote in a court filing.
The group said the Court’s June ruling did not create an exception for military academies and that West Point should not be allowed to “label and sort thousands more applicants based on their skin color” when selecting students for their next class.
“Should these young Americans bear the burden of West Point’s unchecked racial discrimination? Or should West Point bear the burden of temporarily complying with the Constitution’s command of racial equality?” the group said in its court filing.
But while the group says the academy will begin reviewing applications sometime after January 31, the Biden administration said the school has been reviewing applications since August.
The Supreme Court’s order comes after lower courts had refused to block the admissions policies at both schools while the lawsuits advance.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued on behalf of the Biden administration 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.”
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