The American Bar Association Pushes Anti-White Discrimination

Attorney Alison Somin writes:

Law schools are desperately changing hiring and admissions policies to increase diversity—not because of their own internal objectives, but because of pressure from accrediting agencies.

New research from Pacific Legal Foundation reveals how the American Bar Association (ABA) pressures public law schools to adopt race- and sex-based hiring and admissions preferences. Through its accreditation standards, the American Bar Association (ABA)— which oversees U.S. law school accreditation—wields enormous power to dictate how law schools operate regarding questions of race and sex, potentially in violation of Title VI and the Constitution. Since most states require bar exam candidates to have graduated from an ABA-accredited law school, losing accreditation would be catastrophic for a law school and its students.

The report, based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the 50 best public law schools (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report), confirms what legal insiders have speculated for years: Accreditors use their quasi-governmental authority to push institutions toward likely unconstitutional and unlawful practices. Among the 45 schools that responded to the survey, 20 received commentary from accreditors that explicitly highlighted their failure to meet the ABA’s diversity standards, such as having too few minority or female faculty and lacking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) task forces.

Rather than pushing back against accreditors’ claims, many schools feel pressured into making changes to satisfy accreditors’ demands. For example, the ABA investigated George Mason University School of Law extensively starting in 2000 for supposed violations of its diversity standards and only gave up after the school shifted its admissions strategy to achieve the racial numbers the ABA wanted. In 2006, newly established Charleston School of Law failed to gain ABA accreditation over concern about insufficient racial diversity. The school ultimately gained accreditation after it agreed to appoint a director of diversity.

These diversity standards don’t just fall into ethically questionable territory—they’re often illegal.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court affirmed that race-based admissions in higher education violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Moreover, laws in states like California and Florida prohibit public institutions from using racial preferences. Nonetheless, the ABA’s standards—especially Standard 206, which focuses on diversity and inclusion—appear to flout these laws. In fact, until recently, the ABA openly claimed that a law school couldn’t cite a state anti-discrimination law as a defense for failing to satisfy accreditation diversity requirements.

Policymakers have grown increasingly alarmed over the unlawful pressures of accreditation. Iowa legislator Henry Stone recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how accreditors effectively nullified his state’s rollback of DEI banmandates. And just this year, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Education (ED) to “hold accountable” accreditors who violate federal law by requiring institutions to engage in unlawful discrimination.

Unfortunately, an executive order isn’t enough to bring about lasting change. Although the ABA recently agreed to temporarily suspend enforcement of its diversity standards, legislative reform would bar accreditors from pressuring institutions of higher education to violate civil rights laws.

A proposed amendment to the Higher Education Act (HEA) would do just that. The amendment would prevent the ED from recognizing any accreditor that imposes admissions or hiring requirements based on race or sex. It would preserve a school’s right to adopt its own lawful policies, regardless of whether they align with the political views of accrediting agencies.

Accreditation standards should help ensure that all students receive adequate preparation to embark on their legal careers rather than imposing arbitrary demographic requirements on schools. Every aspiring attorney, regardless of their race or sex, deserves an equal opportunity to pursue their dream. It’s time for law school accreditors to stop pressuring law schools into obtaining arbitrary demographic results and start embodying our nation’s principles of equality and opportunity.

Promoting equal opportunity doesn’t require mandating demographic quotas—it requires removing barriers so that all applicants can compete on a level and fair playing field.