Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Naval Academy is facing a lawsuit over its race-conscious admissions from the same legal group that successfully brought down these types of policies in the landmark case the U.S. Supreme Court decided this year.
- This is the second complaint that Students for Fair Admissions, or SFFA, has filed against a military academy. SFFA is also seeking to overturn policies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, arguing in both cases that the academies illegally consider race in admissions.
- The lawsuit against the Naval Academy was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. An academy spokesperson said Friday it does not comment on pending litigation.
Dive Insight:
The twin lawsuits against the military academies aim to capitalize on SFFA’s June victory at the high court, which struck down race-conscious policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
That opinion threw out decades of legal precedent enabling colleges to factor race into the admissions process.
However, it specifically exempted military academies.
In a footnote in the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote military academies may have “potentially distinct interests” from other institutions.
This did not satisfy SFFA, which started pushing for a lawsuit against the academies shortly after the Supreme Court delivered its ruling.
“By tethering its use of race to the racial demographics of the enlisted corps and the country as a whole, the Academy is violating equal protection,” SFFA wrote in the new complaint.
The federal government has defended the use of race in military academy admissions.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who represented the Biden administration during the Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill cases, argued before the Supreme Court a year ago that ensuring diverse armed forces is a “national security imperative.”
“Our armed forces know from hard experience that when we do not have a diverse officer corps that is broadly reflective of a diverse fighting force, our strength and cohesion and military readiness suffer,” Prelogar said.
