West Point Hit With Lawsuit Over Race-Based Admissions Process
After scoring a major U.S. Supreme Court victory earlier this year, Students for Fair Admissions is taking aim at the discriminatory admissions process currently being enforced at West Point.
The group argued against affirmative action before the nation’s highest court, which ultimately issued a decision striking down the consideration of race as a primary factor in college admissions. That ruling included a loophole for military academies, however, and SFFA hopes to close it with a new lawsuit.
As the organization wrote in its initial court filing: “For most of its history, West Point has evaluated cadets based on merit and achievement. For good reasons: America’s enemies do not fight differently based on the race of the commanding officer opposing them, soldiers must follow orders without regard to the skin color of those giving them, and battlefield realities apply equally to all soldiers regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin.”
That policy has changed significantly in recent decades, though, the lawsuit alleges.
“Instead of admitting future cadets based on objective metrics and leadership potential, West Point focuses on race. In fact, it openly publishes its racial composition ‘goals,’ and its director of admissions brags that race is wholly determinative for hundreds if not thousands of applicants.”
Two White applicants, both of whom presented stellar grades, optimal physical fitness and a family history of military service, have also joined the lawsuit out of concern that their race will prevent them “from competing for admission on an equal footing.”
Such discrimination is not only unjustified, the lawsuit states, but “unconstitutional for all other public institutions of higher education.”
Each of the West Point applicants involved in the lawsuit has done so anonymously due to age and fear of “reprisal from West Point and others if his participation in this litigation becomes public.”
Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts defended the exclusion of military academies from the June ruling, citing “the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”
In light of the ruling itself, however, SFFA President Edward Blum argued that “it must follow that the U.S. military’s higher education institutions must end their race-based policies as well.”
