The U.S. Naval Academy has stopped considering race or ethnicity in its admissions, in response to a Trump administration executive order, the academy told a federal appeals court on Monday. As a result, a lawsuit seeking to stop its use of race-conscious admissions is moot, the academy said in court papers, and should be dismissed.
The change to its admissions policy is a stark turnaround for the academy, which had argued for years that having a racially and ethnically diverse fighting force, and an officer corps that mirrored that diversity, was essential to strong troop morale and national security.
But the Naval Academy said that after reviewing the record in the court case, the government had found that consideration of race and ethnicity “does not promote military cohesiveness, lethality, recruitment, retention or legitimacy; national security; or any other governmental interest,” according to its joint motion with Students for Fair Admissions, which had challenged the academy’s admissions policy in court.
The week after he took office, President Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” which called for, among other things, the elimination of race-based and sex-based discrimination within the military. And Pete Hegseth, the incoming secretary of defense, sent an early note on official letterhead that said, “DoD ≠ DEI*.”
In response to those directives, the Naval Academy formally changed its admissions policy in February, according to court papers.
Mr. Hegseth affirmed the new “merit-based” policy in a May 9, 2025, memorandum, effective for the 2026 admission cycle, the court papers say.
The joint motion would end what was expected to be one of the next big challenges to affirmative action.
In the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning racial preferences in college admissions, Chief Justice John Roberts exempted the military academies from the decision for the time being because they had “potentially distinct interests.”
By the fall of 2023, Students for Fair Admissions had sued West Point and the Naval Academy, and it went on to sue the Air Force Academy, challenging their race-conscious admissions policies.
Now, at least one of those lawsuits is most likely dead.
“This joint filing is of enormous significance for our nation’s military readiness,” said Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, which successfully challenged affirmative action. “We applaud this extraordinary accomplishment by the president and the Department of Defense, which restores the colorblind legal covenant that bonds together our military institutions.”
In his statement, Mr. Blum suggested that Students for Fair Admissions was seeking a similar outcome from other military academies. “It is our hope that the U.S. Military and Air Force Academies will pursue the same legal outcome,” he said.
Until now, the military had argued that abandoning race-conscious admissions at the academies would set back the military by generations, perhaps to the Vietnam War era, when the military was plagued by conflict between Black and Latino troops and a largely white officer corps.
Even now, “there is a significant deficiency in the number of officers of color in the officer corps of the Navy and Marine Corps,” Judge Richard D. Bennett of Federal District Court in Maryland, wrote in the decision in December that ruled against Students for Fair Admissions and kept affirmative action in place at Annapolis. That decision had been appealed and led to Monday’s joint motion to dismiss.
The change in policy may not be permanent, however. “When an administration changes, it can take a different legal position,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “In four years, the leadership of the academy could come back and say, ‘We changed our mind.’”
Alain Delaquérière and Seamus Hughes contributed research.
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
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