The first volley in the Left’s assault on VMI began with the 1996 Supreme Court case United States v. Virginia. The Clinton Administration had sued VMI, the last all-male public university in the country at the time, to admit women. Justice Scalia, the lone dissenter to the Court’s mandated integration of VMI (Justice Thomas recused himself), noted that the system of governance installed by our country’s forefathers “is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution.” At the end of his withering opinion, he remarked, “Today’s decision does not leave VMI without honor; no court opinion can do that. In an odd sort of way, it is precisely VMI’s attachment to such old-fashioned concepts as manly ‘honor’ that has made it, and the system it represents, the target of those who today succeed in abolishing public single-sex education.”
To supplement the Court’s draconian ruling, Bill Clinton’s Department of Defense warned VMI that if it went private to avoid the consequences of U.S. v. Virginia, all ROTC programs would be revoked from the school, preventing cadets from commissioning upon their graduation. The Institute capitulated.
In 2001, the next wave of the Left’s assault focused on the Institute’s religious observances, deep traditions that defined VMI since its inception in 1839. The entire Corps traditionally prayed grace together before supper every evening. The ACLU sued and won, and another jewel was taken from VMI’s crown.