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Court Refuses to Block West Point Use of Race in Admissions, Doesn't Express Any Substantive Opinion on Question
From today's order in Students for Fair Admissions v. USMA at West Point:
The application for writ of injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied. The record before this Court is underdeveloped, and this order should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question.
The District Court denied a preliminary injunction on Jan. 3, so the case remains pending there; part of the District Court's rationale was:
A full factual record is vital to answering this critical question whether the use of race in the admissions process at West Point furthers compelling governmental interests and whether the government's use of race is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. The Court cannot enjoin West Point's use of race in admissions without a full understanding, informed by a complete factual predicate, as to what exactly are the compelling interests asserted, to whom those compelling interests belong, and how in this specific case they are or are not narrowly tailored to achieve those interests. Accordingly, Plaintiff has not met its burden, on the present record, to show a clear, or otherwise preponderant, likelihood of success on the merits.
There thus hasn't been either a final District Court decision nor a Court of Appeals decision.
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Sotomayer. Enough said????
Sotomayor overseas the Second Circuit. The full Court rejected the injunction.
She did her job, referred the matter to the full Court. The full Court, not just Justice Sotomayor, denied the injunction.
Can you even pretend you understand how this works? You make everyone reading this blog stupider every time you post.
Did she not have the option to approve or reject the request all by her lonesome? IANAL. I don’t know how this works. But it seems reasonable to think that if she’s the justice who “oversees” that circuit, she could have handled it herself.
She could have not referred it to the full court, leading to the same legal effect as the court’s denial of the injunction, but that might have been seen as a partisan decision. I believe a single justice doesn’t have the authority to enter an injunction except perhaps in an emergency situation when they also forward the application for injunction to the full court — so maybe she could have enjoined West Point until the full court decided to reject the application, but obviously she didn’t.
There is nothing wrong with the composition of the military being 100% asian.
John McCain and Group Captain Mandrake would have disagreed with you
The service academies aren’t MIT. They also need cadets that are athletic, so that isn’t going to happen.
MIT has a ROTC program — and being a Land Grant College, is required to.
“They also need cadets that are athletic”
If you are trying to say that Asians don’t have the physical ability to be soldiers … yikes. WWII and the wars in Korea and Vietnam beg to differ.
Oh. NOW they care about the record below.
Pickey – Choosey.
About time for Supreme Court justices to start referring to their various constituencies.
Wait, it doesn’t say which races benefit from the alleged discrimination. If I don’t know that, how can I know if the discrimination is right or wrong?
blacks, hispanics and the football team thank her
?
those three are the impacted groups
Who’s the “her” they are thanking? I don’t get it.
I’m pretty sure Sotomayor is a woman, did that escape your notice?
Then what are they (supposedly) thanking her for?
“I’m pretty sure Sotomayor is a woman”
Now, let’s not jump to conclusions. What is a woman, anyway?
In any case, the decision was by the whole Court. Justice S simply referred the matter to her colleagues.
I of course will await with interest the Court’s explanation why racial diversity at West Point serves a utilitarian or meritocratic purpose, while undermining both purposes at Harvard. I expect to be waiting a very long time.
Well, first you have to wait for them to say such a thing, which they haven’t.
Right. And I don’t expect them to say it. That was my point. I’m glad you got it.
I expect the Court’s right-wing majority to rest on their partisan laurels, with one standard for Harvard, which the right-wing majority wishes to hamper, and another standard for the military academies, which the right-wing majority wishes to convenience.
I think your own ultra-rationalist ideology plays no more role than to provide an occasional smoke screen in the Court’s reasoning about racial policy amelioration.
You know what would get them to block. For someone to discriminate the wrong way. That is overtly favor whites.
Good discrimination is OK. But its not OK t use race anyway you please.
What I don’t logically understand is what difference it makes if the service academies can discriminate because the majority of the active duty officer corps now come out of ROTC programs at regular colleges & universities — they would have to be flagrantly discriminatory at the service academies to have any significant statistical impact on the racial makeup of the cadre of new officers as a whole. It’s not “reserve” officers as it was a century ago.
From Wiki: In 2020, ROTC graduates constituted 70 percent of newly commissioned active-duty U.S. Army officers, 83 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Marine Corps officers (through NROTC), 61 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Navy officers and 63 percent of newly commissioned U.S. Air Force officers…
In my experience, racial preference is bad for the military. I left active duty after 14 years in the Navy toward the end of the Carter administration for a number of reasons. One of which was my experience at my last posting as a Qualified in Submarines instructor for the MK 113 underwater firecontrol system maintenance class.
The HMFIC let us (the three instructors for the course) know that the command wanted a certain trainee to pass the course and to be sent to the fleet. The kid was Black, well behaved, a bit shy, dressed neatly, but could not read. I was flabbergasted. Aboard a sub, the Planned Maintenance System has numerous daily, weekly, monthly, etc. checks to be performed. There might be six daily’s, three weekly’s, etc. So for those nine checks there would be nine printed PMS cards, some multisided that would detail inputs, equipment configuration and pass/fail results. If you could not read you could not do this job. Period. On top of that, getting to be legitimately Qualified in Submarines as an illiterate is frankly unimaginable.
The kid passed, I left the service the same year. BTW, not all valves on a submarine are righty tighty, lefty loosey. If you have forgotten, the direction of turn on those valves is printed on the handle.
Frank Drackman, who is illiterate, claims to have spent years in the military, contributing to our record of no wins in 75 years. Do you believe his story?
Different jobs require different skills and attributes. I have no knowledge of Drackman.
Maybe the conservative justices are worried that someone might question the white, male nature of their hiring decisions with respect to clerks (and the white, male roster of a movement conservative, faux libertarian blog with a vanishing academic veneer)?
Normal person: Is the nation’s foremost officer-training school being run in a legally-permissible manner?
Kirkland: [partisan talking points]