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Not satisfied with nixing affirmative action for most institutes of higher learning, Students For Fair Admissions set their sights on West Point to finish the job. The SFFA v. Harvard decision left a carve-out for military academies to use affirmative action after essentially taking on good faith that diversity matters on the warfront. Since then, they’ve taken West Point to court and asked the Supreme Court to make the military academy suspend use of affirmative action in the meantime. For now at least, the Supreme Court chose to not act as Blum’s handmaid. From Inside Higher Ed:
The case, Students for Fair Admissions v. U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is currently being heard by a federal appellate court. The plaintiff, SFFA—the same organization that won landmark victories last year against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—appealed for an emergency injunction from the court to stop West Point from considering race in admissions while the lower court’s proceedings continue.
In an unsigned note with no apparent dissents, the justices of the high court said they were passing on the case because its “record before this Court is underdeveloped, and this order should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question.”
SFFA isn’t defeated yet — the federal appeals case is yet to be decided. It will be interesting to see what the military’s fully fleshed-out defense of affirmative action looks like. A brief survey of military history offers several nodes to justify the military-specific carve out. There’s the obvious one of Uncle Sam depending on a standing reservoir of poor minorities willing to do anything for a chance to escape their living conditions and getting rid of affirmative action will weaken our forces at best, or at worst bringing back the damned draft angle — it is hard to overestimate how pivotal recruiting the poor functionally requires affirmative action once you factor in proxies for race as a violation of the 14th Amendment:
But the obvious stuff, while true, wouldn’t be the best PR move for West Point. There could be some fun angles, like that racism made for some of the best pilots in WWII and disbanding affirmative action would prevent recruiting similarly situated fighters. They could also just go for the jugular and argue that having a diverse chain of command is a great line of defense against soldiers just outright killing the officers they don’t like. Because if West Point stands up and says, “Affirmative action is good because it reduces the chances of higher-ups getting fragged on the battle field,” I’m hard pressed to think of SFFA’s answer to that.
Go Army, beat SFFA.
Supreme Court Passes on West Point Affirmative Action Case [InsideHigherEd]
Earlier: Blum Plans To Seige West Point’s Affirmative Action Usage
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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