Trump Targets American Bar Association Accreditation Power – Something I’ve Advocated For Years
I’ve been arguing to strip the ABA of its near-monopoly accrediting power since 2022. I’m proud that I was against the ABA before it was cool to be against the ABA.
On April 23, 2025, Donald Trump signed another series of Executive Orders, including one targeting the role of the American Bar Association Council in accrediting law schools.
The EO Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education addressed both college and professional accreditors. Here’s what it said about the ABA Council:
The American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (Council), which is the sole federally recognized accreditor for Juris Doctor programs, has required law schools to “demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion” including by “commit[ting] to having a student body [and faculty] that is diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.” As the Attorney General has concluded and informed the Council, the discriminatory requirement blatantly violates the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023). Though the Council subsequently suspended its enforcement while it considers proposed revisions, this standard and similar unlawful mandates must be permanently eradicated….
American students and taxpayers deserve better, and my Administration will reform our dysfunctional accreditation system so that colleges and universities focus on delivering high-quality academic programs at a reasonable price. Federal recognition will not be provided to accreditors engaging in unlawful discrimination in violation of Federal law….
[2] (b) The Attorney General and the Secretary of Education shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, investigate and take appropriate action to terminate unlawful discrimination by American law schools that is advanced by the Council, including unlawful “diversity, equity, and inclusion” requirements under the guise of accreditation standards. The Secretary of Education shall also assess whether to suspend or terminate the Council’s status as an accrediting agency under Federal law.
It’s amazing how so many things we have been advocating for years, such as opposition to DEI-based discrimination, are now coming to fruition. Add the opposition to ABA accreditation to the list. We’ve been argueing against that for several years.
On February 10, 2022, I co-authored an op-ed at Real Clear Politics, ABA Forcing Wokeness on Law School , arguing for the states to take action since the Biden administration would never challenge the ABA:
Legal education is about to undergo a revolutionary change, with the American Bar Association poised to mandate race-focused study as a prerequisite to graduating from law school. It’s another instance of woke ideology being forced on the nation, and may necessitate that states revisit the ABA’s government-granted near-monopoly accrediting power.
This race-focused educational mandate is being forced on law schools through the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (ABA). Much of ABA’s power stems from the federal government. Law students must attend schools whose accreditor is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to receive federal student loans. The ABA is the only federally recognized law school accreditor….
Whether or not ABA accreditation previously ensured quality, the ABA has become partisan, using its power to promote an ideological agenda….
That may explain why ABA membership dropped from 300,000 (over 50% of the bar) in 1980 to 194,000 (14.4%) in 2017. ABA may once have been a proxy for the American legal community, but now it’s just a proxy for the left wing of the American legal community. Yet its accrediting power continues….
Whatever the reform approach, action is needed. States enabled the ABA’s near-monopoly accrediting power, which now is being abused for ideological purposes. What the states gave the ABA, the states can and should take away.
In May 2022, I appeared on a Federalist Society Panel, Debate: Should American Bar Association Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?
On October 1, 2024, Equal Protection Project Calls On American Bar Association To Fully Comply With SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling
I commend the Council for taking a fresh look at Standard 206 following the United States Supreme Court’s landmark Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) decision and deciding that “revisions to Standard 206 were needed.” In addition, the Council’s decision to propose the Standards Committee’s second proposal to Standard 206, rather than the now-discarded first proposal, is well taken, given the first proposal’s suggested emphasis on racial “diversity” and its suggestion that law schools make “use [of] race and ethnicity in its admissions process to promote diversity and inclusion.”
I do still object, however, to the proposed revision to Standard 206. The proposed new standard – now renamed “Access to Legal Education and the Profession” – purports to eliminate any race based quotas or other means of unlawfully discriminating against students of any race or national origin, but it contains qualifiers to otherwise unobjectionable policy statements that undermine its stated intention to emphasize “access” for all students to law school and the justice system.
The ABA proposal to force DEI into mandatory law school education has been back and forth over the years as the political winds shifted, with the ABA Temporarily Suspending DEI Enforcement after Trump’s Inauguration. In March 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi Warned American Bar Association To ‘Immediately’ Abandon Diversity Mandates.
So the current EO on ABA accreditation has been a long time in the making. I’m proud that I was against the ABA before it was cool to be against the ABA.
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Comments
A classic tale of an organization taken over by left wing ideology. The need for the ABA ended long ago. Buh Bye!!
It takes Rs a generation to notice that a three letter organization is a tool for the Left; long after it was obvious.
Too many “Rs” like it.
Good!
Now Trump should do medical schools
Read the EO. He gave the AMA subsidiary the same treatment as the ABA committee.
He’s ending their monopoly powers.
Yes
The medical schools are abhorrent
Simple,.create a set of standards (in fact probably the old ABA standards from the early ’00s) for accreditation. Run it from the much reduced Dept Ed. Get Congress to pass simple rule on eligibility to practice before Federal District Courts, Federal Circuit Courts and Executive Branch Agencies; IRS, SEC, SSA, Immigration and so on….Then apply the standard to preclude graduates of Law Schools whose programs fall short. Take away the ability to produce billable hours and Law Firms will start to make risk/reward decisions about hiring grads of non compliant Law Schools. Trickles down to the student decisions about which Law Schools to consider. The marketplace would then take over.
This is awesome first step. Obviously they need to carry this to conclusion against a mountain of coming law fare but happy that they are fighting the right fights
Next up are all the other accreditation agencies for medical school, for colleges and high schools generally, etc
If the Trump administration simply approved alternative accreditors of law and medical schools, I don’t think the ABA or AMA have any serious claim that have some sort of entitlement to their monopoly powers.
Just the threat that Trump might do so made the ABA “pause” its longstanding campaign to strongarm its DEI positions onto law schools.
Yes, I think this should probably be done now, before some ambitious District Judge enjoins it as contrary to the spirit of an order stopping Trump from fighting DEI in professional schools.
If the feds had “deputized” the AARP or NRA, there would be no AMAC or GOA.
NFPA codes are adopted by practically every municipality (as consumers, not drafters), yet they have no governmental authority whatsoever, the process is all voluntary. If it works for firemen, electricians, homebuilders, etc., and they’re all in agreement and running smoothly for decades, no government imprimatur should be necessary here either,
affirmaction has been rubber stamping these anti americans for decades
like their hi tler they tie everything up in the courts and produce no actual good…just tear down wht people and the very system they love but have PROVEN
they could have never ever created with their tribalist mentality
I hope they get to state licensing requirements. New York Requires 1 credit each 2-year period in “Diversity, Inclusion and Elimination of Bias”.
Clarification: Continuing Legal Education
Well, that’s New York. What do you expect?
CLE – 2 hours wasted every 2 years
This would be a great opportunity for anti-DEI seminars, as DEI is a form of bias. Or perhaps one on persecution of Christians. There may already be non-left-wing courses about antisemitism.
The new first year course ” Neo-constitutional Law” has supplanted the old Con Law class. No need for SCOTUS precedents. Select District Court opinions will suffice.
In what law school is that?
What actually is the law regarding discrimination. Is it civil or is it criminal? It should be criminal. A felony with steep penalties. Make it so and then go after these organizations, corporations, schools, and state and local government officials that insist on DEI, Put them in jail.
I demur. That makes them like gun laws — something you can use to beat up civilians with, while anyone with any connection to government is always exempt.
What they did to John Eastman and Sidney Powell should be more than enough blow back.
This news comes at an auspicious moment as our son awaits news that he passed the Georgia Bar. Reform is long overdue but I’m not hopeful that change will come soon. These next few hours are unbearable.
Sometime in the mid/late 1980s, I quit having my employer reimburse me for ABA dues. I notified the ABA in writing that I would no longer have my dues supporting the ABA’s pro-abortion activities; I urged many other attorneys, in private practice and in corporate law departments, to do the same; I felt better, but knew my actions had no impact on the ABA. – 1969 J.D.
Should have cut this stinking leftist organization out of the process long ago.
Give Bush (?) credit for stopping the practice of submitting proposed judges to the ABA for ranking,
De-accredit Harvard Law, please!
At least we are not in Israel BY LAW, more that 20% of the committee selecting judges is chosen by the bar association. (To be fair, ususally by different factions.) One of the current two is named Mohammed.