The American Bar Association’s Discriminatory Diversity Push Is Ending—For Now
With the Department of Education threatening to revoke its accreditation authority over law schools, the ABA has voted to pare back its diversity rules.
For more than seven decades, the American Bar Association has been recognized as an authority to accredit law schools. The Department of Education recently recommended revoking that authority, and an independent advisory board will be meeting to discuss the recommendation on September 23. The department’s report mostly emphasizes other legal concerns, but it appears it has prompted the ABA to at least reconsider its longtime work on race issues.
For years, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly, the ABA has nudged law schools toward racial discrimination in student admissions and faculty hiring, often in defiance of relevant state and federal law. Needless to say, this history of misconduct is extremely troubling. If the Department of Education ultimately chooses to recognize another accreditor in the ABA’s stead, it should ensure that the new authority is committed to nondiscrimination.
Several years back, researchers from Pacific Legal Foundation sent public records requests to the 50 public law schools ranked highest by U.S. News & World Report. Forty-five of these schools ultimately responded. Twenty respondents were faulted by the ABA in some way for not meeting diversity standards. Schools were criticized for not having enough minority faculty, not having enough female faculty, and not having enough racial and ethnic minority students.
