The Naval Academy Can Still Consider Race in Admissions. Here’s Why.
Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images- A district judge ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy can continue considering race in admissions decisions.
- The lawsuit was brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the plaintiff that prevailed in the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action.
- The ruling cited the academy’s role in producing a diverse officer corps, which is vital to military cohesion and national security.
- SFFA has promised to appeal, and the case could ultimately come before the Supreme Court.
A federal judge has ruled in favor of the U.S. Naval Academy in a case challenging its race-conscious admissions policy.
Senior District Judge Richard Bennett, who served for more than 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and Maryland National Guard and holds the rank of major, offered a 175-page defense of the academy’s interests — and the nation’s — in considering race in admissions.
The lawsuit was brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the plaintiff that won the 2023 landmark case against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina resulting in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action.
In his majority opinion in Harvard, Chief Justice John Roberts included a brief footnote exempting the nation’s military academies “in light of the potentially distinct interests [they] may present.”
Evidently not satisfied with that exemption, SFFA brought suits against the Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), aiming to prevent these institutions from considering race in admissions.
In December 2023, Bennett denied SFFA’s request for a preliminary injunction preventing the Naval Academy from considering race in its admissions decisions for students applying ahead of the Jan. 31 deadline.
Following a September 2024 bench trial during which Bennett heard testimony from 18 witnesses, he affirmed those “distinct interests” Roberts referenced.
“The Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions policies are narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest in national security,” he wrote.
“Defendants have proven that the Naval Academy’s limited use of race in admissions has increased the racial diversity of the Navy and Marine Corps, which has enhanced national security by improving the Navy and Marine Corps’ unit cohesion and lethality, recruitment and retention, and domestic and international legitimacy.”
In a lengthy discussion of the issue of race in the military, Bennett cited historical examples of how racial imbalance in the various service branches, especially a lack of Black representation within the officer corps, caused unrest and disloyalty among the troops.
“The military’s history of racial discrimination and racial tensions, and resulting ‘lack of unit cohesion,’ ‘lack of trust,’ and ‘diminish[ed] … capability,’ directly informed the military’s judgment about the critical need for diversity in the armed forces generally and in the officer corps more specifically,” he wrote.
Although the Navy is currently the most diverse branch of the armed forces, it has the “widest gap in minority representation among officers and enlisted,” Bennett noted. While 52% of Navy service members are racial minorities, only 31% of Navy officers fall into that category.
Moreover, 92% of Navy admirals are white, including all 10 of those serving at the highest possible rank.
The relatively narrow pipeline to officer status often flows through the Naval Academy, which produces about 20% of the officers in the Navy and the Marine Corps (the other branch represented at the academy).
Bennett also dissected the academy’s admissions process, detailing how race is considered as one factor in a holistic assessment. The academy uses race as a “nondeterminative factor” to “create a brigade with a wide range of life experiences and backgrounds that will ultimately lead a diverse enlisted force,” he explained.
Although the academy employs a range of tactics to increase diversity, such as outreach programs and targeted recruitment, there are no “workable or viable race-neutral alternatives that would allow it to achieve its current level of diversity about as well as its current race-conscious admissions process.”
Should the academy no longer be able to consider race in admissions, the diversity of its student body — and, by extension, of the Naval officer corps — would suffer.
Bennett systematically refuted the plaintiff’s arguments pertaining to quotas and racial balancing, racial stereotypes, and discrimination against Asian American applicants, all of which had been considered in the Harvard case.
Beyond these points of law, Bennett’s decision rested on two fundamental concerns. One is deference to the military and the executive branch and the collective judgment of what is best for the armed forces and the nation’s security. On this matter, Bennett took SFFA to task.
“While the importance of maintaining a diverse, highly qualified officer corps has been beyond legitimate dispute for several decades,” he wrote, “Students for Fair Admissions invites the court to second guess the military’s half-a-century-long judgment that a diverse officer corps enables the military to meet its critical national security mission by enhancing unit cohesion, assisting recruitment and retention, and ensuring domestic and international legitimacy.”
The second is the essential nature of the service academies. As a result of the SCOTUS decision, colleges and universities nationwide must maintain a race-neutral posture in admissions. But the service academies aren’t exactly “colleges” in the strictest sense.
And these students aren’t just “students” but military personnel in the making.
“Just as the academy treats its midshipmen as service members, Congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary treat the Naval Academy as a military institution,” Bennett wrote.
Therefore, Bennett continued, “the application of strict scrutiny to civilian institutions’ race-conscious admissions programs does not necessarily mirror its application to race-conscious distinctions in the military context.”
What about ROTC students at traditional colleges and universities? Might they also receive the same consideration given this logic? Even though ROTC programs share a mission to produce military officers, Bennett argued, the academies are “specifically designed to ensure a higher degree of experience, education, qualification, and preparation for officership.”
Naturally, SFFA wasn’t pleased with the decision and promised to appeal.
“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,” Edward Blum, SFFA president, said in a statement.
Others celebrated the decision.
“We are pleased to see the District Court affirm the right of the Naval Academy to use an admissions policy designed to identify talented, hard-working students that hail from all parts of the racially diverse country our military serves,” Michaele Turnage Young, senior counsel and co-manager of the Legal Defense Fund’s Equal Protection Initiative, said in a statement.
“The military is keenly aware that a climate of distrust caused by a lack of equal opportunity along racial lines risks mission failure and loss of life. It is unfortunate that some are willing to undermine the safety of our sailors and risk our country’s national security by promoting exclusion.”
Ultimately, the case could come before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already denied SFFA’s request for a temporary injunction barring West Point from considering race in admissions.
In light of this latest district court decision and SCOTUS’ transparent stance on the issue, it seems unlikely the military academies will be changing their policies anytime soon.