Thanks to a helpful and interested reader, we found the court document repository for the case Students for Fair Admissions [SFFA] vs The United States Military Academy at West Point, the Department of Defense, et al. Below are links to the documents, including the complaint, response, and supporting declarations.
You can access them at the source by setting an account up at: https://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/pscof/registration.jsf and looking for the New York Southern District Court case number 7:2023cv08262.
Documents
- SFFA Complaint document [file link]
- SFFA Memo in support of injunction [ file link ]
- USMA Response / Opposition memorandum [file link]
- Declaration of Ashish Vazirani [ Link ] , Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (P&R) for the Department of Defense (DoD)
- Declaration of LTG Douglas Stitt [ Link ] , Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel / G-1
- Declaration of Beth Bailey [ Link ], Ph.D. and founding directorof [sic] the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas
- Declaration of Jeannette Haynie [ Link ], Senior Advisor to the Office of the Under Secretary of Personnel and Readiness (OUSD(P&R)) at the Department of Defense (DoD) on matters relating to diversity and inclusion and the Department’s mission
- Declaration of Jason Lyall [ Link ], Ph.D. Chair of Transnational Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College
- Declaration of COL Deborah McDonald, former head of admissions 2008-2023 [ Link ]
- Amicus brief in opposition by USMA graduates [ Link]
First Reaction
We haven’t had time to thoroughly digest the responses and declarations yet. There’s a lot of material! But we will.
The SFFA initial complaint lays out SFFA’s arguments. The Memo in support of injunction is a response to West Point’s response, and is interesting in how it highlights discrepancies and gaps in the defendant case.
In the meantime, there is clearly interesting and valuable information in the USMA Memorandum and COL McDonald’s declarations. They get into specifics on admissions processes, qualification criteria, and where racial preferences (“race… as a plus factor”) are applied to meet “aspirational goals.” We encourage all potential applicants to review those documents carefully.
The remaining declarations are significant because they are presented when USMA is directly challenged on its diversity-first policies. Accordingly they represent the most comprehensive, robust case that USMA can offer to justify such policies. We will get into details on them in subsequent posts. We are particularly interested in the quantitatively-backed assertions made by Professor Lyall, the first such military-efficacy- focused argument for enforced diversity that we have seen. It is a bit late to the party, coming as it did in 2020, well after USMA had been using racial preferences for many years, but it is still relevant and promises to be engaging.
Our first reaction is that the defendant memo and declarations sidestep critical issues. They seem, to a point, to argue that “diversity” in the military is good, and then fail to make the connection to it necessitating discrimination at the expense of merit in admissions . There is limited or no discussion in the USMA documents about the merit of, well, merit and its impacts on officer quality.
The issue at stake is not whether the Army should allow diversity in its ranks or whether it should treat its troops equally and well. The USA has a volunteer Army and many different peoples in the country, and the military will always have racial diversity. Army leaders will always have to manage diverse fighting forces and lead their troops.
The issue is whether West Point should racially discriminate, even in limited amounts, to achieve racial balancing goals rather than let merit-driven criteria guide admissions. And West Point seems to be adopting the curious position of “Diversity is so critical to Army effectiveness that we have to racially discriminate, but it’s ok because we don’t do very much of it and don’t meet the goals we set.”
Thank you for your commitment to unbiased objectivity.
I did not read all of this. I am pretty certain that would be a very unproductive and inefficient use of my time.
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Here is a quote from the friend of the court brief authored by 107 WP grads:
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“West Point cannot achieve its leadership-development goals unless its student body is diverse in ways that reflect the composition of enlisted soldiers and the nation at large, including with respect to race.”
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This is Democrat party equal results not equal opportunity, racial-quotas-are-required dogma. The Democrat party’s position on racial quotas stems from their pursuit of political power in federal, state, county and municipal elective offices. Since the 1932 elections, Democrats have found they could significantly increase their electoral success by targeting blacks with government policies that have a disparate impact on blacks, including affirmative action.
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So the motive of the U.S. government including the U.S. Military Academy is to assist the Democrat party in its buying votes for Democrat candidates by showering blacks with various affirmative action quotas including admissions to West Point as well as promotions of cadets to higher positions in the cadet chain of command.
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This is an immoral, unconstitutional effort. The FIFTH Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT to practice equal protection. The FOURTEENTH Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requires STATES to practice equal protection.
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It is also an efforts that weakens the national defense of the United States. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution instructs the Legislative Branch to “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” That implies hiring and promoting the most well-qualified persons to serve at all levels of the U.S. Military. This is the opposite of hiring and promoting to fill quotas for Democrat party target voter racial and other identity groups (LGTBQ and heterosexual females).
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It is also an effort where the soldiers and civilian employees of the Defense department including the soldiers and civilian employees of the U.S. Military Academy are using their positions to favor one of what the founders contemptuously called “factions” over the other main political party. U.S. Army soldiers used to scrupulously proclaim absolute ironclad neutrality to the comical extreme of not voting in presidential elections because they wanted to never have the slightest thought that the commander in chief was less worthy—even in the privacy of the voting booth.
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Now, in their amicus brief, 107 high academic graduates at West Point have declared themselves squarely in favor of the Democrat party identity quota position with regard to admissions to West Point and against the race-neutral Republican party position on that issue, in spite of their oaths to defend the Constitution conflicting with the Democrat party position.
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“I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” (Title 5 U.S. Code 3331, an individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services)
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Shame on the 107 amici. It appears that knowing which side their political bread is buttered on trumps duty, honor and country and their oaths.
The ugly truth is this: Without considering race in West Point admissions, USMA would admit very, very few African-Americans who weren’t also Corps Squad athletes.
Back when I participated in West Point alumni forums, the #1 most polarizing topic was minority admissions. Those conversations were often heated and ugly. From time to time, an informed opinion would emerge. This is an expert from a post from a long time Admissions volunteer (a.k.a. Liaison officer / Field force representative).
” According to our USMA Director of Admissions, Colonel XXX, in the
entire United States of America, there are approximately 1,100
African-American high school senior students each year who meet the
minimum qualifications for admission to USMA. Colonel XXX, who is a Tier I
university admissions director by virtue of his position at USMA, has
access to facts and figures that back up his claim. I have been in
briefings with him at USMA and heard this figure cited in the past.
With such a small national pool to choose from it is very difficult to
recruit African-American students to USMA. Most other Tier I colleges
and universities in America are offering scholarships and grants to
these same students to entice them to enter this or that school to beef
up their own minority enrollment.”
The problem is SAT / ACT scores. There are too few African-American high school kids with high enough test scores to be competitive for service academies. Minority students with high test scores are highly sought after by Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. West Point has a tough time competing for those kids. So, they lowered the bar to boost minority admissions.
Without race-based admissions, West Point will admit very few African-American candidates. Right, wrong, or otherwise, that is the issue at hand.
If service academies are not allowed to follow their status-quo admissions practices, we will see a much different USMA in a few years.
It would be interesting to ID the ethnicity, sex and and year group of the 107. The Academy has been lowering its standards for decades and this sort of uneducated and biased support for mediocrity is only one result. Any one who has not read the much more intellectual and even handed amicus produced by Scoot McQuarrie vis a vis the Harvard decision should do so. His arguments are not only sound and proper but lay bare the absurdity of the entirec DEI mantra.
This group probably also thinks GILLAND’S assertion that the honor code is only ASPIRATIONAL!
The short essay The Fate of Empires, by John Glubb, factually analyzes how every former empire failed by elucidating the comparability of their decline and eventual destruction. The sort of intellectual elitism the 107 represent are the classic elements which Glubb finds in the final stage of failure.
The most interesting points that I see:
1. USMA sets racial composition targets.
2. African-American, Native-American and Hispanic candidates go through a different evaluation process bt the Diversity Outreach Office; and
3. The number of LOA’s (675 for class of 27) is far higher than believed and appears to be a major recruitment tool that has admittedly had limited results.
While the overall percentage of African-American cadets remains low (@10%) it appears there are still qualified candidates who are losing out to less qualified candidates in the admissions process. I don’t believe Col. MacDonald’s arguments regarding the need for racial balancing to support a diverse Army is supported by the evidence. This is particularly true when by her own admission only around 20% of comissioned officers are USMA graduates. Racial discrimination is still racial discrimination.