Dec 6 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy may continue to consider race when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, even after the U.S. Supreme Court last year barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett in Baltimore rejected arguments by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, that the Annapolis, Maryland-based Naval Academy's race-conscious admissions program was unconstitutional.

The decision marked a victory for outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden's administration, which had argued that senior military leaders had long recognized that a scarcity of minority officers could create distrust within the armed forces, which were racially segregated until 1948.

Blum in a statement said the group was disappointed by the ruling and planned to appeal, first to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if unsuccessful there, the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It is our hope that the U.S. military academies ultimately will be compelled to follow the Supreme Court’s prohibition of race in college admissions," he said.

A spokesperson for the Naval Academy, which trains officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps, said it was aware of the ruling and was reviewing it.

Whether the federal government will continue to defend the admissions policy against appeals or in other challenges is now in doubt with Republican President-elect Donald Trump poised to take office on Jan. 20. His first administration supported lawsuits challenging affirmative action policies in civilian higher education institutions.

Blum's group had been seeking to build on its June 2023 victory at the Supreme Court, when the court's 6-3 conservative majority sided with it by barring policies used by colleges and universities for decades to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses.

That ruling invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. But it explicitly did not address the consideration of race as a factor in admissions at military academies, which conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said had "potentially distinct interests."

After that ruling, Blum's group filed a pair of lawsuits against the Naval Academy and the Army's U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, seeking to knock out the carve-out for military schools. The Naval Academy case was the first to go to trial.

His group argued that the Supreme Court's ruling should be extended to the military academies, whose policies it claims are discriminatory and violate the principle of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.

But Bennett, an appointee of Republican then-President George W. Bush who served over 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and the Maryland National Guard, said the evidence presented during a non-jury trial demonstrated the wisdom of the Supreme Court's caution when it came to military academies.

Bennett said the program was narrowly tailored to meet that interest by rectifying the "significant deficiency" in the number of people of color who are Navy and Marine officers, who the Naval Academy trains.

He said that while today racial minorities make up 52% of enlisted Naval service members, only 31% of its officers are minorities. In the Marine Corps, the least diverse branch of military, minorities comprise 35% of enlisted Marines but just 29% of its officer ranks, he said.

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Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Deepa Babington and Alexia Garamfalvi