The Air Force Academy has stopped taking the race, gender or ethnicity of applicants into consideration, the Justice Department stated in a filing Friday responding to a lawsuit that accused the institution of discrimination for making class diversity a factor in its admissions process.
In the filing, Justice Department lawyers said that Gwendolyn R. DeFilippi, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, issued a memorandum in early February eliminating “quotas, objectives, and goals based on sex, race or ethnicity for organizational composition, academic admission, career fields, or class composition” from its admissions considerations.
The Air Force Academy, in Colorado, is the second military academy to adopt such a change to how it reviews applications. Last month, in a similar filing, the Justice Department stated that the Naval Academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, had issued similar guidance in February dictating that “neither race, ethnicity, nor sex can be considered as a factor for admission at any point during the admissions process, including qualification and acceptance.”
Both filings sought to postpone hearings in their respective court cases while the policies took effect and offered to provide the court with status updates after 60 days. The changes were first reported by Reuters.
Justice Department lawyers explained in the filings that the changes were carried out to adhere to a Jan. 27 executive order in which President Trump said that “every element of the Armed Forces should operate free from any preference based on race or sex.” Both lawsuits were filed before Mr. Trump took office.
The filings also refer to a Jan. 29 memorandum issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth which, using an abbreviation for the Department of Defense, ordered that “no DoD Component will establish sex-based, race-based, or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission, or career fields.”
