US Naval Academy defends race-conscious admissions policies at trial

By Mike Scarcella and Nate Raymond

BALTIMORE (Reuters) -The group that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to bar the consideration of race in college admissions took the U.S. Naval Academy to trial on Monday in an effort to end a carve-out that allows military academies to still employ affirmative action policies.

A lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a group founded by affirmative action foe Edward Blum, told a federal judge in Baltimore that the Naval Academy was unlawfully applying “significant” racial preference when deciding who should be admitted to the Annapolis, Maryland-based school.

The group is seeking to build on the June 2023 ruling in its favor by the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court banning policies used by civilian colleges and universities for decades to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses.

The ruling, though, 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."

Democratic President Joe Biden's administration has cited the need to ensure the Naval Academy has a diverse pipeline of students that can help it address a racial gap that still exists between service members and officers within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

But Adam Mortara, a lawyer for SFFA, argued it had never looked at whether its student body's diversity would change if it ended its race-conscious admissions practices and lacked any meaningful power to effect change in the armed forces' officer ranks.

"If they can't meaningfully move the ball, they can’t do it all,” Mortara told U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett in his opening statement.

U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Gardner countered that the academy had a compelling interest in diversity, which he said benefited military performance, recruitment and retention efforts.

He stressed that its consideration of race was limited and part of a “holistic” admissions process. "No candidate is admitted solely because of their race," Gardner said.

The trial comes a year after the Supreme Court invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina, both of which SFFA has sued and accused of discrimination.

Blum's group argues 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.

It has filed two lawsuits to end the exception, the other of which is pending in New York state against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Mike Scarcella in Baltimore; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)