The United States Supreme Court’s ruling that race-based affirmative action practices are unconstitutional at public and private U.S. universities will not affect military service academies, but repercussions will still likely be felt in the nation’s armed forces, Military.com reported.
However, SCOTUS’s ruling on affirmative action will not apply to military academies, it seems, given that the majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts – said that this policy would not affect how service academies processed admissions. The move permits race-conscious admissions policies, which have historically been justified by the need for a diverse officer corps.
"The special nature of military academies and their interests was addressed in an important amicus brief filed in Grutter v. Bollinger almost 20 years ago," said Lawrence Friedman, professor of law at New England Law Boston. "The Supreme Court's decision tacitly acknowledges that."
But given that officers are also commissioned from The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and Officer Candidate School (OCS) – both of which depend on the existing pool of college students – the SCOTUS ruling may still play a role in the makeup of the armed forces.
SCOTUS’s 6-3 decision to rule against affirmative action – the majority opinion argued that such policies violated the 14th Amendment – came along ideological lines on the court Jun. 29 and is but another of the court’s decisions that upend decades of precedent. Last year, SCOTUS overturned landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade.
