Florida announces plans for July bar exam with masks and thermometers
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The Florida bar exam will take place in July, the Florida Board of Bar Examiners announced Tuesday.
Masks will be required for test-takers, proctors and administrators, and people coming from out of state for the exam might have to quarantine for 14 days “or some other time period,” before the administration starts, according to a news release.
Also, according to the news release, postponing the exam is not off the table, and the state supreme court may consider other options if anything changes regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lifted stay-at-home orders starting April 29 in a three-stage plan that initially allowed restaurants and shops to reopen with limitations, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
The exam will be administered concurrently at the Tampa Convention Center and the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Test-takers will sit at least six feet apart in all directions, and officials from the Florida Department of Health will take the temperatures of applicants, administrators and proctors before entering exam sites. Entrance will be denied to anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher, according to the news release.
According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, other states that plan to have a July bar exam include Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Washington and Wyoming. The NCBE announced Tuesday that there will be a sufficient number of examinees to release July exam materials.
Meanwhile, Cathren Koehlert-Page, a law professor at Barry University in Miami, has started a petition on Change.org asking that the Florida Board of Bar Examiners consider other options, such as a fall test or an online exam.
She argues that taking the temperatures of test-takers, proctors and administrators won’t keep out people carrying the coronavirus who are asymptomatic, and students have already had a difficult year because of the virus.
