Imagine judging a trial, ruling for one party, and writing a 179-page opinion, only to find the same parties asking you to vacate your opinion and dismiss the case six months later! That’s exactly what happened to the federal district court judge who presided over the trial in the Students for Fair Admissions v. The United States Naval Academy last year.   

In June 2023, the Supreme Court held that public and private colleges and universities could not use racial preferences in admissions because that violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, noted in a footnote that since the military service academies were not parties to the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the opinion was not applicable to them “in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”   

In the fall of 2023, Students for Fair Admissions sued the Naval Academy in federal court alleging that the consideration of race or ethnicity in admissions at the academy violates the Constitution. To establish standing, Students for Fair Admissions represented Member D (a pseudonym), a white applicant who was otherwise qualified, but was denied admission to the Naval Academy.   

In December 2024, after a nine-day bench trial in a federal district court in Baltimore a few months earlier, Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled in favor of the Naval Academy, holding that the service academy could continue to use race in its admissions process as it was narrowly tailored to achieve what the Biden administration claimed was a compelling national security interest, namely “diversity.”   

Bennett dedicated several pages of his opinion to the concept of judicial deference to the legislative and executive branches in military matters. The Supreme Court, according to Bennett, has treated the........

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