(Press Release) Today, Chairman of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee Jim Banks passed an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit service academies from using race as a factor in admissions decisions.

The amendment is cosponsored by Chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness Mike Waltz. Read the amendment here.

Said Rep. Banks:

“Racially biased admission policies are always wrong, but when used by our military academies they risk lives and weaken our national security too. Our military must uphold the essential American principle of equal opportunity.”

The Supreme Court did not consider military academies in its Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling that banned affirmative action in university admissions.

Chairman Banks’ Military Personnel Subcommittee held a hearing on admissions practices at service academies in July 2023.

At an April House Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth testified to Rep. Banks that she did not understand why the service academies were exempt from the Supreme Court’s ruling.

AMENDMENT TO H.R. 8070 OFFERED BY MR. BANKS OF INDIANA (pdf)

🚨🚨My amendment to the FY25 NDAA would ban affirmative action at our military academies just passed.

Discrimination is UnAmerican!

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) May 23, 2024

Also see:

Racial Preferences at Our Service Academies Are Not Essential to National Security
By Gen. Arthur E. Brown Jr., U.S. Army, retired, former Army vice chief of staff, former deputy superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and 1953 West Point graduate,
and Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, U.S. Air Force, retired, former Air Force chief of staff and U.S. Air Force Academy graduate