In a policy reversal in line with President Donald Trump's views, the US Naval Academy will no longer consider race as a factor in admissions as the elite military school had long done to discriminate against white applicants.
The change was disclosed on Friday in a Justice Department legal filing in an appeal by a group opposed to such affirmative action policies that challenged the racist admissions program at the Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Naval Academy had continued to employ its affirmative action admissions program even after the US Supreme Court in 2023 rejected such policies at civilian colleges and universities.
That ruling was an outcome long sought by many Americans who noted that white and certain other applicants were being disadvantaged.
Days after returning to office, Trump signed an executive order on January 27 that eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the military.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was appointed by the Republican president, two days later issued guidance barring the military from establishing, "sex-based, race-based or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission or career fields."
In light of those directives, Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Admiral Yvette Davids issued guidance prohibiting the consideration of race, ethnicity or sex as a factor in its admissions process, the Justice Department filing said.
A Naval Academy spokesperson declined to comment.
US District Judge Richard Bennett in Baltimore last year ruled that the Naval Academy's affirmative action admissions program, which had been defended by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, was legal.
The ruling came in a lawsuit by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, challenging the policy.
Friday's filing by the Justice Department was made in the group's ongoing appeal of Bennett's ruling.
The Biden administration argued in the case that a scarcity of minority officers could create distrust within the US armed forces.
Bennett decided that the academy's program was narrowly tailored to meet that interest by rectifying the "significant deficiency" in the number of racial minorities who are navy and marine officers and are trained at the Naval Academy, despite minority individuals making up 52 per cent of enlisted navy service members and 31 per cent of its officers.
In the Marine Corps, the "least diverse" branch of military, minorities still comprise 35 per cent of enlisted marines and 29 per cent of its officer ranks.
The Justice Department said in its Friday filing that the Naval Academy's policy change could affect the lawsuit. Blum's group has been seeking to build on its 2023 victory at the Supreme Court.
The court sided with the group by barring policies used by colleges and universities for decades to increase their number of minority students.
That ruling invalidated affirmative action admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. But it explicitly did not address the consideration of race as a factor in admissions at military academies, which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote at the time had "potentially distinct interests".
Blum's group subsequently filed lawsuits against the Naval Academy, US Air Force Academy and the US Military Academy at West Point seeking to invalidate the carve-out for military schools. The Naval Academy case was the first to go to trial.
Blum in a brief statement said more news about his cases would be "forthcoming".
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Franklin Paul Alexia Garamfalvi and Tomasz Janowski)