Advocacy Group Sues US Naval Academy Over Race-Based Admissions

Midshipmen muster at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in an undated photo. U.S. Navy

The U.S. Naval Academy has been sued by a nonprofit advocacy group over its race-based admissions policy, which the group says gives advantages to minorities.

The Oct. 5 lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). SFFA had earlier succeeded in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down race-based admissions at colleges and universities.

The recent lawsuit points out that the Naval Academy’s admission process involves two stages. In the first stage, applicants have to pass medical examinations and a physical fitness test to secure a “nomination” from a member of Congress, the vice president, the president, or the secretary of the Navy. In the second stage, applicants must be accepted by the academy’s admissions office, where “racial preferences kick in.”

In 1948, President Harry Truman passed an executive order stating that there shall be “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed forces without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” However, the academy has “strayed from that approach” over the past decades, the lawsuit said.

The Naval Academy “openly admits that ‘race’ is a ‘factor’ that it considers when making admissions decisions,” the complaint states.

In 2020, a diversity task force created by the chief of naval operations recommended the Navy to “deemphasiz[e] the use of standardized academic tests” and to instead prioritize subjective factors.

The aim was to improve “minority representation” and to ensure that the officer corps reflected the “relevant national demographic percentages,” the lawsuit said, citing a Navy report.

“The Academy stopped requiring applicants to submit standardized scores three years ago,” SFFA said in the complaint.

“Because the Academy provides a racial ‘benefit’ to ‘some applicants but not to others’, it ‘necessarily advantages the former group at the expense of the latter.' Because race is a ‘positive’ for minority applicants who receive preferences, it is necessarily a ‘negative’ for all others,” the lawsuit stated.

It quoted a 2010 New York Times op-ed written by Naval Academy professor Bruce Fleming, who said the admission standard into the institution “immediately drops” if an applicant identifies as “non-white.”

“Notably, the ‘non-white’ category described by Professor Fleming does not include Asian applicants,” the lawsuit stated, while calling the magnitude of racial preferences in the academy “stunning.”

It also cited Mr. Fleming’s 2003 op-ed in The Washington Post in which he wrote that “if a ‘majority’ student scored 600 or more on each part of the SAT I test, math and verbal, we put a check mark and went on to consider other aspects of the application. We did so in the case of a ‘minority’ student if the scores were in the neighborhood of 550.”

Racial Balance and the Fifth Amendment

The lawsuit noted that the academy “goes to great lengths” to achieve a specific racial balance in its admissions.

For instance, the class of 2025 contains 1,183 midshipmen, which includes 672 white students, 79 black students, and 115 Asian students. For the 2026 class, the institution has enrolled 1,184 midshipmen with similar racial numbers—676 white students, 75 black students, and 117 Asian students.

General David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, speaks during the U.S. Naval Academy 2022 Graduation Ceremony at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md., on May 27, 2022. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The lawsuit accused the academy of violating the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

“The Fifth Amendment contains an equal-protection principle that binds the federal government and is no less strict than the Equal Protection Clause that binds the States,” the lawsuit said.

It cited a decision from another ruling which stated that “any person, of whatever race, has the right to demand that any governmental actor subject to the Constitution justify any racial classification subjecting that person to unequal treatment under the strictest judicial scrutiny.”

The lawsuit asked the court to rule that the academy’s use of race in admissions is “unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment” and issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the institution from “considering or knowing applicants’ race when making admissions decisions.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the academy for comment.

Supreme Court Ruling and Military Academies

In its June 29 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for too long, universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin.” However, “our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Berkeley University student Calvin Yang (C), flanked by Edward Blum (L) and Adam Mortaraw, speaks during a news conference on the Supreme Court's affirmative action in college admissions decision at the Press Club in Washington on June 29, 2023. Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

In a footnote, the court made an exception in the ruling for military academies as they did not participate in the case and none of the lower courts addressed “the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context.”

In its lawsuit against the U.S. Naval Academy, SFFA argued that the group’s reasoning “makes it perfectly clear that the Academy’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional.”

In September, SFFA sued the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to stop it from continuing with race-based affirmative action policies.

“Because the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent opinion in the SFFA cases expressly forbids all institutions of higher education from using race in admissions decisions, it must follow that the U.S. military higher education institutions must end their race-based policies as well,” Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said in a Sept. 19 press release.