The American Bar Association has come under fire for requiring schools to put some effort into making sure that their student bodies don’t look like the start of a small ethnostate. Schools had to show some attempt at encouraging diversity in recruitment, admissions, and programming. This was a hard pill to swallow, especially for the Trump administration. After some light pushback, the ABA has put a moratorium on the standard, citing the difficulty for schools to follow the guidelines without running into legal trouble after SFFA v. Harvard. Given the challenges, the ABA has been reconsidering its standards. Reuters has coverage:
The American Bar Association will undertake a sweeping review of its standards for law schools as states weigh dropping the organization as an accreditor and critics blame its regulations for driving up student costs.
While there’s nothing factually incorrect about the sentence above, the word “states” is carrying a lot of weight here. It would be one thing if half of the country was thinking about dropping the ABA, but it’s just Florida and Texas. And you know what they say about Texas:
Texas and Florida may be of a mind to drop the ABA but the problem is, again, the rest of the country. The remaining 48 states won’t cede out just because they do — and that’ll make it a lot harder for freshly minted Texan and Floridian JDs to get jobs from employers looking to hire accredited graduates. Even if other states are thinking about dropping the ABA, they’d have to come up with their own accreditation process to replace the job the ABA has been doing well enough for decades now. Texas and Florida are special cases in that they are states who would go to lengths to keep the administration happy, but everyone else probably doesn’t give enough of a damn to reinvent the wheel.
The committee’s proposed elimination of the diversity and inclusion standard is the part of the story that actually has teeth to bite with. At this point, just rip the Band-Aid off. It’s been on life support since February and unless there are going to be some serious changes in the Executive or the Judiciary over the next three years, it is going to be a constant buzzing in the ear. The question of why diversity matters to the ABA has been open since February of last year — maybe it’s time to stop pretending it’s an actual priority they hold dear.
ABA To Review Law School Standards, May Drop Diversity Rule Amid Pressure [Reuters]
Earlier: Texas Plans To Cut Law School Accreditation Ties With The ABA
Florida Still Stumbling Through Trying To Replace ABA Accreditation
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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