The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have decided to allow West Point to continue its alleged race-based admissions practices. 

The allegation, according to the Washington Examiner, comes from Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative student group.

The group alleges that West Point, the well-known military academy, is engaged in unconstitutional race-based admission practices, and it wants to put an end to these practices.

The reader will likely recall that the U.S. Supreme Court, just recently, decided another race-based admissions case involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The justices, in this case, found the universities' admission practices to be unconstitutional.

Accordingly, you may ask why West Point's alleged race-based admissions practices have not been struck down by this precedent.

The Examiner explains part of the reason why, writing:

When the high court struck down affirmative action policies at private and state schools last summer in its 6-3 [Harvard] ruling, it provided a footnote in the opinion noting military academies were not part of the case . . .

This, however, is putting the cart before the horse.

The Supreme Court, in the ruling mentioned at the outset, did not rule on the merits of the case. It did not, for example, decide that West Point's admissions practices are or are not constitutional.

Rather, the justices were ruling on a procedural matter. They were ruling on whether West Point ought to be allowed to continue with its admissions practices while the case that SFFA has brought against it continues. The justices have ruled that West Point can.

"The record before this Court is underdeveloped, and this order should not be construed as expressing any view on the merits of the constitutional question," the justices wrote.

Accordingly, now the case will proceed at the lower court level, and, while it is doing so, West Point will be able to continue with its admission practices.

There is still every possibility that, at some point, this case - on its merits - will end up before the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Edward Blum, the president of SFFA, is clearly not happy with the justices' ruling.

In a statement, he said:

It is disappointing that the young men and women who apply to West Point for the foreseeable future will have their race used as a factor to admit or reject them. Every year this case languishes in discovery, trial and appeals means that our nation’s best and brightest young men and women will be classified, sorted, and preferred based on their skin color rather than just on their abilities.