On Jan. 3, Philip Halperin, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, denied a request to preliminarily enjoin the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from using race as a factor for selecting members of its incoming classes. The plaintiff, Students for Fair Admissions — which successfully litigated a similar lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in 2023 — had sued West Point. Students for Fair Admissions sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against the academy’s use of race in its admissions process.
Relying on its victory in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, the organization argued that the equal protection principles embodied by the Fifth Amendment due process clause barred West Point from using race because the government lacked a “compelling” justification for not treating everyone equally. In that case, the court held neither Harvard nor UNC had established a compelling justification for a racially biased admissions process. But it left open the question of whether that ruling applied to the U.S. military academies because none of them was a party to that case.
Since then, Students for Fair Admissions sued the U.S. Naval Academy and West Point. In each case, the district court denied a request for a preliminary injunction. The courts concluded that they could not resolve the merits of the claims without the development of a factual record beyond the affidavits submitted by the parties.
