Affirmative action rulings unlikely to impact military academies’ policies

Two recent high-profile Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action are unlikely to affect admissions policies at military academies, according to school officials and a lawyer.

Former and current Pentagon leaders were concerned that if the Supreme Court called the University of Michigan's affirmative action programs unconstitutional, the ruling could force military academies to halt their efforts to increase minority enrollment. Lower minority representation at the academies would in turn lead to a less diverse officer corps and lower troop morale, they worried.

The officer corps is roughly 20 percent minority. In comparison, troops number about 40 percent minority. Eventually, the officer corps should reflect this demographic so that minority soldiers have role models in leadership positions, said former officers participating in a June 19 forum on affirmative action. Without affirmative action policies to bring a healthy percentage of minorities into military academies, diversity in the officer corps would probably decline because the corps would have a smaller pool of minority graduates from which to draw, they predicted.

But the court's June 23 decision upholding the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy should reassure concerned military officers, according to Virginia Seitz, a partner in the Supreme Court and appellate practice group at the firm Sidley Austin Brown and Wood. Seitz served as the counsel of record for a group of nearly 30 retired and current Pentagon officials who filed a friend of the court brief in February supporting the university.

Military academies are tight-lipped about their affirmative action policies, Seitz said. But, based on General Accounting Office reports and congressional testimony, she has concluded that they consider race one of many factors influencing admissions decisions and do not assign any specific weight to minority status. The University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action program is similar.

Schools can use race as one admissions factor, "to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body," according to the Supreme Court decision regarding the University of Michigan Law School. But policies that are not "narrowly tailored" and systematically grant minority applicants a quantifiable advantage violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court said in a separate decision striking down the University of Michigan's undergraduate affirmative action program. The undergraduate school universally awards applicants from under-represented racial backgrounds with 20 points on a 150-point scale used to guide admissions decisions.

None of the military academies use such a point system to give minorities an advantage, Seitz said. "It is absolutely crystal clear, especially in the case of West Point, that they do individual assessments of [minority] candidates," she said. "I think this means that the military academies are going to pass muster."

West Point sets targets for the ideal percentages of minorities in incoming classes, said Col. Michael Jones, director of admissions. The targets are intended to reflect the demographics of the overall U.S. population the Army serves. West Point runs outreach programs to encourage minorities to apply and then considers race, along with many other factors, in deciding whom to accept.

There are at least 17 or 18 qualifications that all students admitted to West Point must meet, Jones said. Race is given consideration because the school would like students to have exposure to a variety of ethnic and racial groups before they graduate and join the officer corps, he said.

Many students grow up in an environment lacking diversity, he said. "It's important to have a good mix [of students] so they get to know each other's cultures and see what the rest of America is all about," he said. "That all carries forward in the Army. It makes them better officers."

But he added that the academy has no hard and fast rules for admitting minorities. "If we don't meet the goals [for percentage of incoming minority students], we don't meet them," he said.

West Point does not anticipate making any changes to its affirmative action policies in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions, Jones said. The school's judge advocate general is looking over the rulings and will make a final recommendation on whether the school will need to change any policies to comply with the decisions.

Similarly, the Naval Academy is "carefully looking into the recent Supreme Court decision," according to a statement. The school does not set quotas or targets for minority admissions, the statement said. But Seitz concluded the academy does consider race to a limited degree when reviewing applications.

The Air Force Academy also looks at race, but views it as one of many factors, including leadership potential and academic qualifications, that influence admissions decisions. The school has no diversity targets and does not plan on changing its affirmative action policies for the time being, unless it receives directions to do so from the Defense Department, academy spokeswoman Pamela Ancker said.

Of the military schools, the Coast Guard Academy is the only one that does not consider minority status at all when screening applicants. A mid-1970s law (United States Code, Chapter 14, Section 182) prohibits the academy from accepting students based on race, said Capt. Sue Bibeau, director of admissions.