Supreme Court refuses to block West Point from considering race in admission decisions

And the academies should not use it either

This one is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I understand the ruling from the Supreme Court and why the service academies were exempted.

Keep in mind the government is allowed to discriminate if it can show a compelling interest to do so.

The administration requested that the academies be exempted from the decision because they had a distinct national security role and were different from civilian educational institutions. Roberts wrote for the majority and said they were exclude for two reasons - first that the academies were not parties in the cases, and second, that there were "potentially distinct interests"

Why I'm scratching my head is for this - if the academies need to maintain affirmative action for "distinct interests" (maintain a diverse officer corps) then how does that synch up with ROTC programs (at least for the Army ... could be different for the other services) being the primary source of new officers (15% for West Point compared to 47% from ROTC).

So if more than three times the amount of officers are coming from ROTC than the Academy, the "potentially distinct interests" doesn't sound like it really applies because ROTC provides three times the amount of officers to the Army than West Point does.

Basically it comes back to the first reason - they weren't party to the cases. So the Supreme Court punted.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMaterial/2024/Base%20Budget/Military%20Personnel/Military%20Personnel%20Army%20Volume%201.pdf