The American Bar Association’s legal education council is expected to vote this afternoon to formally scrap the diversity and inclusion standard for law schools, acquiescing on a long-standing conservative complaint about the ABA’s accreditation process. The council already voted to repeal this standard back in May. The House of Delegates declined to concur, but on August 4, the House voted to let the council do it without them.
In return for this cowardly backslide, the Department of Education announced that it’s going to yank the ABA’s accreditation power anyway.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this strategy!
“After reviewing ABA’s accreditation standards, Department staff found the accreditor out of compliance with the agency’s accreditation regulations and recognition standards. We will not comment on details as the process is ongoing and involves multiple stages of review, including by an independent, bipartisan advisory committee in September.”
Who would’ve thought the mastermind of Trump University has it out for higher education accreditors?
The Department’s vagueposting here is a byproduct of the fact that the ABA is almost certainly not out of compliance with jack shit. But this DOE takes the position that even a paused standard that might keep one straight C white man out of law school is a bridge too far. So after a year and a half browbeating the organization into submission, the Department decided to step on the ABA’s final act of prostration anyway.
Melissa Hart, who chairs the accreditation council, responded to a finding she hasn’t seen:
“Although it is difficult to comment on a recommendation we haven’t yet received, we look forward to the opportunity to address any misconceptions and clarify the record.”
Have fun in kangaroo court.
I’ve long criticized the ABA’s accreditation role, but always from the position that it spent years being too permissive. It rubber-stamped a whole tier of toilet schools with garbage bar passage rates running a tuition scam that torched a generation of graduates who never stood a chance of paying off their debts. Stricter standards also play into my firm belief that the bar exam should be nuked from space and replaced by a draconian series of law school standards that guarantee anyone graduating from an accredited law school is ready to practice law. Now the ABA is poised to lose its accreditor role to a panel of right-wing podcasters who have convinced themselves that Harvard Law can’t teach as well as a diploma mill that lines the pockets of a Republican donor. That’ll teach me to play around with that monkey’s paw.
Even if the ABA could have been more strict, we know for a fact that the baseline they did set is still better than the alternative. A 35-year study of every state experiment with non-ABA pathways into the profession — apprenticeships, law office study, correspondence programs, unaccredited schools — found that the alternatives produce dramatically worse outcomes for those candidates. That’s not a reason to wholesale reject experiments with alternative pathways, but, to put a new spin on a famous quote: the ABA is the worst legal education accreditor in history except for all the others we’ve ever tried.
None of this is a surprise. The administration has had it out for the ABA since jump. First they went after the ABA’s judicial vetting role, and then they turned to legal education. The functionally useless FTC spent last year blaming high law school tuition on ABA accreditation requirements, which is roughly like blaming grocery prices on not packing road kill. If any institution inflated the cost of legal education, it was U.S. News spending three decades rewarding schools for running up costs — years of scholarships to buy LSAT medians, administrative bloat to goose per-student spending, and career services fictions to prop up employment numbers.
Some Republican-run states already jumped the line on the Department of Education. Texas moved accreditation authority to its own Supreme Court in January. Florida and Ohio are working on it. Once the administration decided to make the ABA a punching bag, it set the incentive structure so every knuckle-dragging state official looking to bolster their bona fides could take a run at accreditation. A law degree from a Texas school is going to be worth less than a single-ply napkin at a BBQ, but someone’s state senate campaign can brag about making sure every 1L Torts class begins with Deuteronomy. If you’re wondering how this will all play out, consider the undergraduate experience of New College in Florida. Ron DeSantis canned all the education professionals and installed new standards that met his political goals. Spending is up and educational outcomes have gone in the dumpster.
Nor should anyone be shocked that the administration would still kick the ABA after it surrendered. The Biglaw capitulators also learned that there’s no such thing as buying peace from this administration. There are a lot of reasons why this might be true, but the simplest is that once a bully picks a target, taking their lunch money becomes secondary to the unending infliction of humiliation. Whatever the specific grievance is, it’s just a placeholder. There’s no “victory” for the administration, because the whole point is to show the Fox News audience that they’re still hammering their appointed punching bags.
The ABA, Biglaw firms, trading partners, birthright citizens… it doesn’t matter if Trump is successful or not, the beatings must continue to sustain morale.
Enjoy the Trump University College of Law, everybody!
Earlier: Turns Out The ABA’s Gatekeeping Role Actually Does Something
FTC Blames High Law School Costs On ABA Accreditation
Law Schools Spent 30 Years Buying U.S. News Rankings And The Bill Just Came Due
Florida And Texas Break From ABA On Law School Accreditation (And What Banning Plato Has To Do With It)
ABA Suspends DEI Accreditation Requirements For Law Schools
ABA Strikes Back At Trump, Condemning His Attacks On Lawyers And The Rule Of Law
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.
The post Trump Administration Moves To Kill ABA As Law School Accreditor On Same Day ABA Surrendering To Him appeared first on Above the Law.
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