State affirmative-action bans decreased racial diversity by up to 47% at top public law schools, study finds
Representation of minority students in public law schools has “decreased substantially” in states that banned affirmative action after 1996, according to a study of first-year law students. (Image from Shutterstock)
Representation of minority students in public law schools has “decreased substantially” in states that banned affirmative action after 1996, according to a study of first-year law students.
The study found that diversity declined up to 17% on average at 23 public law schools subject to affirmative-action bans in 12 states, using data on minority enrollment five years before the ban and seven years after the ban.
At four public law schools with a top 20 ranking by U.S. News & World Report, diversity declined up to 47% over the same time period, according to the study posted last month at SSRN.
The four top law schools affected by the bans are the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, the University of Michigan Law School, the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and the University of Texas School of Law. Those four schools are classified as tier 1 schools in the study.
The researchers compared the affected law schools to three comparison groups: all law schools in the same tier, public law schools in the same tier, and private law schools in the same tier in the same state. (But when there were no private law schools in the same tier, the comparison group became private law schools in the same state.)
Depending on the control group, the share of minorities at law schools affected by the affirmative-action bans decreased between 10% and 17%. Black and Hispanic law students accounted for nearly all the decline in minority representation, the study found.
The study divided the law schools into three tiers. Tier 2 schools were ranked between 21 and 50, while Tier 3 schools were ranked higher than 50.
The study authors are Richard R.W. Brooks of the New York University School of Law and Yale Law School, Kyle Rozema at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Sarath Sanga of Yale Law School. They are planning to post a revised version of the study this month.
The study was posted nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Hat tip to Reuters, which covered the study.
