US District Judge Richard Bennett (Maryland District) ruled that the US Naval Academy can continue to use race as a “factor” in its admission decisions. Never mind that the Supreme Court recognized in its Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard decision that using race in determining admission fitness is intrinsically racist.

This is a terrible ruling on two counts (at least). One is Bennet’s decision to ignore the Supreme Court’s rescission of Chevron Deference as a factor in assessing the legitimacy of a regulation or, by extension, a law. Bennett, in his ruling, chose to ignore the Supreme Court’s rulings in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo and Relentless v Department of Commerce, the two cases the eliminated Chevron Defense as a court decision criterion. Bennett deliberately chose to apply the Chevron technique to his USNA ruling. He closed his ruling with this:

In short, this Court defers to the executive branch with respect to military personnel decisions. Specifically, as noted by Justice Kavanaugh in Austin v United States Navy Seals, “the President of the United States, not any federal judge” ultimately makes such decisions.

Bennett chose to elide in that cite that Austin predates Loper and Relentless, and so any deference aspect of Austin is overridden by them. At least as tellingly, Bennett chose not to disclose that Kavanaugh was writing in the Court’s decision to stay the case pending a lower court’s decision and, more directly to the present matter, that Austin concerned the Navy’s decision to mandate vaccination against the Covid-19 virus; it was wholly irrelevant to any question of the place of race in getting into the Seals (or the Navy or any of the Navy’s training institutions) in the first place.

That’s the technical part of this bad ruling. Bennett also wrote this:

The US Naval Academy is distinct from a civilian university. … During the admissions procedure, which is distinct from that of a civilian university, race or ethnicity may be one of several non-determinative factors considered.

More briefly treated by me, but far more important because it’s on the merits of the matter, is the question of racism in our government institutions. Racism is racism regardless of where it is practiced. That it’s done by our military academies in no way legitimizes it; on the contrary, it deprecates those academies and their ability to train the officers who will lead our men and women in combat. Bennett’s ruling is every bit as racist on this side of the question as was then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s (D) decision to refuse to integrate our military on the other side. Race must be wholly irrelevant in admissions (and everywhere else), neither emphasized in order to block nor emphasized in order to push forward.

This is a ruling that badly wants overruling on appeal.