Changes to ABA accreditation standard addressing race and diversity meet pushback
The ABA headquarters in Chicago. (Photo by John O'Brien/ABA Journal)
Contentious proposed changes to the ABA’s diversity and inclusion standard go too far and could reverse progress made toward making law schools diverse, according to several legal education groups that wrote to the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
In public comments that closed Sept. 30 on the council’s proposed changes of Standard 206, a group of 44 law school deans; the ABA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Center; the Law School Admission Council; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Society of American Law Teachers protested the changes prompted by last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled against affirmative action policies.
The section’s council is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the sole accrediting body for U.S. law schools and serves as an independent arm of the ABA for that function.
The latest proposal would rename Standard 206 “Access to Legal Education and the Profession.” It is currently named “Diversity and Inclusion.” But it has become a lightning rod. Currently, the standard states that law schools must offer full opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities and commit to having a diverse student body in terms of gender, race and ethnicity.
The proposal, however, cuts that language, replacing it with providing access to “persons including those with identities that historically have been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.”
The changes “go further than the law requires and create the very real risk that law schools will abandon commitments to promoting the diversity of a profession with a unique role in achieving a pluralistic democracy,” the group of deans wrote. A group of 74 law professors echoed that, stating the proposal “overreacts.”
Not all commenters disagreed with the intention of the changes, including the Ohio State Bar Association, which “supports the American Bar Association’s efforts to comply” with the Supreme Court decision “while continuing the effort to increase access to the legal profession for all persons, including those that have been historically underrepresented.”
Meanwhile, a group of 19 state attorneys general from Democratic-led states supported the new language but requested the word “diversity” remain in the name of the standard.
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Legal Ed council broadens proposed accreditation standard addressing diversity
