WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court allowed West Point to continue to take race into account in admissions, while a lawsuit over its policy continues.
A judge on Friday rejected an emergency appeal aimed at forcing changes in the admissions process at West Point. The order, issued without significant dissent, comes as the military academy makes decisions about who will be admitted to its next class, the Class of 2028.
Military academies were expressly excluded from a court ruling in June that ended affirmative action almost everywhere in college admissions.
The court’s conservative majority said the racially biased admissions plan violated the US Constitution, in cases from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively. But the high court clarified that its decision did not cover West Point and other national service academies, raising the possibility that national security interests could undermine the legal analysis.
In their brief, unsigned order Friday, the justices cautioned against reading too much into it, saying “this order should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question.”
Cadets walk through the campus at West Point in November. AP
Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the Harvard and North Carolina cases, sued the US Military Academy at West Point in September. It filed a similar suit against the US Naval Academy in October.
A lower court has refused to block the admissions policy at both schools while the legal action is pending. Only the West Point decision was appealed to the Supreme Court.
“Every day that passes between now and then is a day when West Point, using an illegal race-based admissions process, can end another applicant’s dream of joining the Long Gray Line,” attorneys for Students for Fair Admissions wrote in a court filing.
The Supreme Court allowed West Point to continue to take race into account in admissions. Getty Images
West Point graduates account for about 20% of all Army officers and nearly half of the Army’s current four-star generals, the Justice Department wrote in its brief asking the court to let the school’s current policy be set.
In recent years, West Point, located on the west bank of the Hudson River about 40 miles (about 65 kilometers) north of New York City, has taken steps to diversify its lineup by increasing its reach into metropolitan areas including New York, Atlanta and Detroit.
“For more than forty years, our Nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national security imperative and that achieving that diversity requires limited racial considerations in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy. at West Point,” wrote Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar, the top Supreme Court lawyer of the Biden administration.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
