The same group that won a Supreme Court case outlawing the consideration of an applicant’s race in college admissions has moved to its next target.
Students for Fair Admissions filed suit against the US Military Academy at West Point, reports NPR.
The military has deemed the recruitment of minorities a military necessity and a national security issue. During the Vietnam War, tensions erupted between its mostly White officers and its enlisted personnel- many of them minorities.
The Defense Department decided the disparity “threatened the integrity and performance of the military.”
“The Academy is not exempt from the Constitution…Because West Point discriminates on the basis of race, its admission policy should be declared unlawful and enjoined,” Students for Fair Admissions told CNN.
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West Point’s website indicates the school admitted 2,693 White applicants, 483 Black applicants, 414 Asians and 38 American Indians in 2022.
Recently Yale reached an out-of-court settlement with Students for Fair Admissions rather than contest a lawsuit filed challenging its admissions policy.
“Universities are going to have all sorts of different levels of risk tolerance associated with these cases as they come in, and Yale certainly took a very conservative posture,” said Stacy Hawkins, a law professor at Rutgers University. “But that’s important, because we will effectively continue to litigate the contours of admissions practices until we have some clear understanding of what the Supreme Court actually intends.”
RELATED: Lawsuit filed over scholarships for Asian Americans and other minorities
The lawsuit against West Point is being heard in New York and will likely go to the US Supreme Court next year, according to NPR.
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