By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – The U.S. Air Force Academy will no longer consider race as a factor in admissions as the military school had long done to boost enrollment of Black, Hispanic and other minorities, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday.
The change was detailed in a filing by the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court in Denver asking a judge to put on hold a lawsuit that was filed in December by the group that successfully persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to ban race-conscious admissions at civilian universities.
That group, Students for Fair Admissions, was founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum and has been seeking to build on its 2023 victory at the Supreme Court, when the 6-3 conservative majority invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
The ruling did not apply to military academies, which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote had “potentially distinct interests.”
That prompted SFFA to launch new lawsuits aimed at barring similar admissions practices at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.
The Air Force Academy educates cadets for service as officers in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.
Democratic President Joe Biden’s prior administration defended the use of race as an admissions factor, saying senior military leaders had long recognized that a scarcity of minority officers could create distrust within the armed forces.
Courts sided with his administration and declined in SFFA’s cases to block the U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Military Academy from considering race. SFFA sued the Air Force Academy only after Trump had won November’s election.
Trump signed an executive order on January 27 aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion practices within the military.
In Friday’s filing, the Justice Department cited a subsequent February 6 memo from a top U.S. Air Force official that implemented that order by, among other things, ending admissions quotas or objectives based on sex, race or ethnicity.
The Justice Department said the new policy may render SFFA’s case moot as “the Air Force Academy no longer permits any consideration of race, ethnicity, or sex in the admissions process.”
The Justice Department last month said the U.S. Naval Academy similarly had ended the consideration of race as an admissions factor.
Blum had no immediate comment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
