Affirmative Action in the Military: 2025 Orders and Academy Ruling

Affirmative action in the military has been effectively ended. Following executive orders signed on January 20 and 21, 2025, and a Defense Department directive issued on May 9, 2025, the U.S. service academies no longer consider race, ethnicity, or sex in admissions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion offices across the Department of Defense have been shut down. The constitutional question of whether military academies could ever consider race was never resolved by an appellate court, but as a matter of current policy, the answer is settled: admissions and personnel decisions run on merit alone.

The 2025 Executive Orders and Defense Department Directive

The change came fast. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” Every federal agency was ordered to terminate “all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions,” including Chief Diversity Officer roles, within sixty days. Equity action plans, equity-related grants and contracts, and DEI performance requirements for employees, contractors, and grantees were all ordered eliminated.¹

A second order the following day, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” directed agencies to “terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements.”² Both orders reached the Department of Defense. DEIA offices across the services were closed. The DoD’s Chief Diversity Officer position was eliminated. Deputy agency heads were required to assess and report the scope and cost of all prior DEIA activities dating back to January 2021.¹

Then on May 9, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum directing all military service academies to stop considering race, ethnicity, or sex in admissions. The Naval Academy, West Point, and the Air Force Academy each had 30 days to confirm that admissions would be “based exclusively on merit for the 2026 admissions cycle and beyond.” There was no phase-out. The rest of the holistic review remains in place — candidates are still evaluated on leadership potential, physical fitness, academic performance, extracurricular involvement, and congressional nominations — but race and ethnicity are out of the process at every stage.

Why the Military Was Ever a Separate Question

The Supreme Court ended race-conscious admissions at civilian colleges in June 2023 in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, holding that Harvard and UNC’s programs violated the Equal Protection Clause. But the opinion contained a footnote — Footnote 4 — that left military academies out. It said: “No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”³

That footnote left an opening. Where civilian universities had defended race-conscious admissions on the ground of educational diversity, military academies could argue a different compelling interest: national security and the composition of the officer corps. Whether that argument would hold up under strict scrutiny was the question everyone expected the courts to answer next.

The Naval Academy Case and Why No Precedent Survives

Students for Fair Admissions sued the U.S. Naval Academy to test Footnote 4. In December 2024, a federal district court ruled in the academy’s favor, holding that its race-conscious admissions survived strict scrutiny because they served a compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps. That decision was the first — and, so far, the only — federal court ruling to uphold race-conscious admissions at a military academy after the 2023 Supreme Court decision.

It did not survive the change in administration. In a joint motion filed with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice stated it “no longer believes that the challenged practices were justified by a ‘compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps in the Navy and Marine Corps,’ on which the district court had relied.”⁴ The Fourth Circuit granted the motion in July 2025 and vacated the district court’s opinion. The parallel lawsuits against West Point and the Air Force Academy were settled, with terms requiring admissions “based exclusively on merit, not race or ethnicity.”⁵

The result: no appellate court has ever ruled on whether military academies may constitutionally consider race in admissions. Footnote 4 remains technically unresolved. The one district court opinion that addressed it is gone.

What the Policy Change Did Not Eliminate

The end of DEIA programs and race-conscious admissions did not repeal the military’s equal opportunity framework. The Military Equal Opportunity program, governed by DoD Directive 1020.02E and last updated in September 2025, remains in effect. It requires that service members be “evaluated only on individual merit, fitness, capability, and performance,” and prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.⁶

One thing to know about how these protections work: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not apply to uniformed service members, and the EEOC has no jurisdiction over military discrimination cases.⁷ Service members who experience discrimination file complaints through their chain of command and military inspector general channels. Civilian DoD employees, by contrast, are covered by ordinary federal EEO law and use EEOC processes like any other federal employee.⁶

One structural reform from the earlier diversity push has also survived. Since 2020, official photographs have been prohibited in officer promotion selection boards and related processes for assignment, training, education, and command.⁸ The Marine Corps has confirmed that the use of official photographs in promotion selection boards is now “statutorily prohibited,” which means it cannot be undone by executive action alone.⁹

What Is Still Unsettled

The current legal state of affirmative action in the military is defined by executive action rather than judicial ruling. A future administration could rescind the executive orders and direct the academies to resume considering race, but doing so would face immediate litigation, and the settlement agreements in the West Point and Air Force Academy cases may impose lasting constraints depending on their specific terms.⁴ The constitutional question left open by Footnote 4 — whether national security interests can justify race-conscious military policies under strict scrutiny — has still not been answered by any higher court. For now, the military runs on a merit-only framework, and the institutional infrastructure that once supported diversity-focused programs has been taken apart.

1
The White House. Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing
2
The White House. Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Joint Motion to Dismiss and Vacate – Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. United States Naval Academy
5
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Settles Lawsuits Challenging Race-Based Admissions at West Point and Air Force Academy
6
Department of Defense. DoDD 1020.02E – Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity in the DoD
7
United States Coast Guard. Equal Employment Opportunity Laws, Statutes, and Regulations
8
Department of the Navy. NAVADMIN 247/20 – Elimination of the Display of the Officer Photograph During Selection Boards
9
United States Marine Corps. Requirement Update on Official Photographs for Non-Promotion Selection Boards