More than four months after the U.S. Air Force Academy announced it no longer would consider race as a factor in its admissions process, the Justice Department said Tuesday a settlement has been reached between the Colorado Springs academy and a conservative nonprofit whose years long lawsuit challenged the school’s now-abandoned affirmative-action policies.
The settlement closes the book on litigation against both the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., filed by Students For Fair Admissions, the group whose successful challenge of such practices won over the nation’s top justices and swiftly — after Trump was sworn in for a second time — became a cause celebré for the new administration.
“This Department is committed to eliminating (diversity, equity and inclusion) practices throughout the federal government,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the Justice Department release. “We are proud to partner with the Department of Defense to permanently end race-based admissions at West Point and the Air Force Academy — admission to these prestigious military institutions should be based exclusively on merit.”
The recent settlement, and dismissal of the suits, includes agreed upon terms that, according to the Justice Department, help ensure future admission to both prestigious institutions eschews anything with a hint of diversity, equity and inclusion motivations, with enrollment based “exclusively on merit, not race or ethnicity.”
“America is the land of equal opportunity, in spirit and in law,” Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in the Tuesday press release from the Justice Department. “Today’s agreement ensures that our future military leaders will carry on the greatness that is born of opportunity, effort, and a level playing field.”
Enrollment practices that factored in race when evaluating potential candidates for jobs or school admissions became embedded practice in the U.S. starting in many places and sectors in the 1980s, part of nationwide — and increasingly mandated — efforts to boost opportunities for Black, Hispanic and other minorities who’d faced historic discrimination in America.
The settlement echoed one previously reached between Students for Fair Admissions and the U.S. Naval Academy. The Annapolis, M.D., military school similarly shut down DEI initiatives earlier this year in line with the Trump directive.
Founded in 2014 by affirmative-action opponent Edward Blum, Students for Fair Admissions has continued moves that build on its Supreme Court victory in 2023, when the 6-3 conservative majority invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
At the Air Force Academy's Board of Visitors meeting on Thursday, members including Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, questioned the school's leadership closely about the role of race and ethnicity in the admissions policy.
Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, the Air Force Academy superintendent, explained that race and ethnicity did not receive any formal scoring weight as part of the admissions process through an "affirmative-action formula."
"For many years, there was a conversation of that 'as you consider the committee score, you will take into consideration the background of the young Americans,'" he explained.
Now, the academy is weighing whether it will even collect an applicant's race as a data point in the application process, Bauernfeind said.
Gazette's Mary Shinn contributed to this report.
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