ABA Votes to Stop Imposing DEI on Nation's Law Schools

WASHINGTON - EntSun -- The American Bar Association's accreditation council voted 10-6 today to repeal a decades-old standard that requires law schools to "demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion"; apparently in large part because of ongoing attacks by the Trump administration on both diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and accreditors more broadly.

More specifically, it comes just two weeks after the Department of Education recommended that ABA's council, formally called the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, be denied federal recognition in part because of its diversity criterion, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, a frequent critic of the ABA's "stranglehold" on law schools.

The ABA accredits approximately 200 law schools in the U.S.  In fact, in many states a law school graduate may not sit for the bar exam without the ABA's approval of the graduate's law school.

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That's why its power to pressure if not coerce law schools to follow DEI policies, even to the extent that they appear to violate the Supreme Court's 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in admissions, should be reined in, says Banzhaf.

Despite this binding 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the ABA, according to the Wall Street Journal, "continued into the 2024-2025 review cycle to provide training and evaluate law schools" based on the old standard under which the ABA "had told schools to show 'concrete' efforts toward diversity and inclusion in their student bodies and faculties."

Banzhaf also points to the recent formal finding by the U.S. Department of Justice that Duke University Law School violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by intentionally discriminating in admissions on the basis of race when admitting students to three successive classes [2023, 2024 and 2025]; a practice which favored Black and Hispanic applicants, with Black candidates more than three times as likely to be admitted as equally qualified Asian applicants.

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Here's what law professor Banzhaf very recently said about the ABA in Education Department Moves to Strip ABA Law School Accreditation Authority (https://www.campusreform.org/article/education-department-moves-strip-aba-law-school-accreditation-authority/30503): . .

"long overdue."
regulatory stranglehold
have for decades had on our nation's 100+ law schools is long overdue,
"coerce law schools to indoctrinate rather than simply teach students
remedy perceived racial disparities even in ways which were illegal

jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf