By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – 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 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 Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions program was unconstitutional.
Blum’s group had been attempting to build on its June 2023 victory at the Supreme Court, when the court’s 6-3 conservative majority banned policies used by colleges and universities for decades to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses.
That ruling invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. But it explicitly did not address the consideration of race as a factor in admissions at military academies, which conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said had “potentially distinct interests.”
Blum’s group argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling should be extended to those military academies, whose policies it claims are discriminatory and violate the principle of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
But Bennett, an appointee of Republican then-President George W. Bush who served over 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and the Maryland National Guard, concluded the Naval Academy had “established a compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps in the Navy and Marine Corps.”
“Specifically, the Academy has tied its use of race to the realization of an officer corps that represents the country it protects and the people it leads,” he wrote in a 179-page ruling.
Blum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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