Florida has decided that the American Bar Association is just too much. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme Court graciously opened the door to alternative law school accreditors by cutting off the ABA as its sole accepted accreditor for law schools. The court framed this as a bold strike for institutional freedom and not, say, an effort to turn public legal education into a Heritage Foundation book club.
According to the court, “The Court’s goal is to promote access to high-quality, affordable legal education in law schools that are committed to the free exchange of ideas and to the principle of nondiscrimination.”
For the record, the GOP interpretation of “free exchange of ideas and to the principle of nondiscrimination” in law schools just got the new dean of Arkansas fired before she even started, so take this per curiam pronouncement from a collection of Republican appointees with appropriate levels of salt.
This move comes hot on the heels of Texas pulling the same stunt, because nothing conveys careful, evidence-based educational policymaking like red states passing around the anti-wokeness bong and taking rips.
In a Tweet, Professor Orin Kerr offered a much more charitable reading of the Florida decision:
The “particular agendas” that the ABA pushed — which at this point are all but abandoned — were diversity commitments. Obviously, there are people who think diversity training is an objectionable agenda. We call those people “white supremacists.”
But the ABA recognized a diverse legal workforce as advantageous, both within the workplace and to the reality of a diverse client base, and determined that credible law schools should operate accordingly. It’s why comments like “stick to its proper role” miss the mark. The “proper role” of an accreditor in professional education is to make sure a school’s graduates meet the demands of the profession. If a school is graduating attorneys unable to even consider unconscious biases doing active harm to their clients, that’s a professional education issue.
Were the specific requirements imposed by the ABA the best way to promote diversity? That’s arguable. But Texas and Florida aren’t interested in that debate, they object to the idea that diversity should be promoted at all.
If anyone thinks this break will lead to Texas and Florida law schools becoming more committed to the “free exchange of ideas and to the principle of nondiscrimination,” they should promptly remove their heads from their asses before causing serious colon damage.
We actually know the trajectory of these decisions because they’re already playing out in these states’ undergraduate institutions. Texas A&M just canceled a philosophy course because the school decided Plato was too woke. “[T]he Board of Regents has clarified that core curriculum courses, which includes PHIL 111 Contemporary Moral Issues, cannot include issues related to race ideology, gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” the professor was told. They banned a 2400-year-old text because they felt PLATO’s views on gender were too dangerously contemporary.
Florida’s future isn’t much different. The New College of Florida became that state’s guinea pig for reworking higher education along the sort of “free exchange” principles its supreme court writes about in the ABA decision. In January 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis stuffed the board with conservative politicians and right-wing influencers like Christopher Rufo and set out to remake the curriculum. Three years later, spending has skyrocketed and rankings have plummeted. The school has dropped nearly 60 spots in the U.S. News rankings — from 76th to 135th — while spending roughly $134,000 per student. Retention is down. Graduation rates are down. One faculty member described the enrollment situation as “kind of like a Ponzi scheme: Students keep leaving, so they have to recruit bigger and bigger cohorts.” Another former New College official said of school president Richard Corcoran’s administration, “academically, Richard’s running a Motel 6 on a Ritz-Carlton budget.”
That’s what we’re looking at as these states break from the ABA and seek an “alternative” that we all know will end up being PragerU. Just like the Trump Bible, they’re just going to leave the Fourteenth Amendment section out of Con Law.
For what it’s worth, Florida Justice Jorge Labarga filed a dissenting opinion, noting that “the ABA has developed incomparable expertise in the accreditation process,” recognizing that ABA standards “provide consumer protections, public accountability and institutional transparency . . . protecting against predatory admissions and poor programs outcomes.” He’s the lone member of the Florida Supreme Court not appointed by Ron DeSantis.
It’s tragic for the talented in-state students who want to attend a quality public institution, but we need to consider how other states respond to this. At what point do degrees from these ideologically captured institutions stop being professionally valid for licensing purposes? That might sound extreme, but we’re talking about an accreditation regime that’s hostile to Plato. A law school operating under restrictions like that simply isn’t producing graduates that should fill jurisdictions with a lot of trust.
When California experimented with moving away from the bar exam monopoly, people kicked and screamed about it. And it was a disaster, imposed upon applicants far too quickly. Texas and Florida have embarked into much, much more problematic uncharted waters and the outcry needs to be a lot more robust.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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