US Attorney General presses ABA to drop law school DEI rule or risk losing accreditor status

By Karen Sloan

March 5 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called for the American Bar Association to immediately repeal its law school diversity rule and scrap a planned revision of that standard in a letter to the ABA posted to a social media site on Wednesday by a U.S. Justice Department official.

Bondi's letter , posted on social media site X, also warned that the ABA's authority as the government-sanctioned accreditor of U.S. law schools—a position it has held since 1952—can be revoked.

Bondi said that the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar has for years subjected law professors and their students to "unlawful race and sex discrimination under the guise of ‘diversity’ mandates."

Jennifer Rosato Perea, the ABA's managing director of accreditation and legal education, said in a prepared statement on Wednesday that enforcement of the current diversity rule has been suspended and that the ABA Council is still working on revisions to "ensure it adheres to the current law."

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bondi’s letter, dated Feb. 28, is the latest development in an ongoing debate over the ABA’s law school diversity standard, which has been under review since the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in college admissions.

The rule at issue involves how law schools must demonstrate commitment to diversity through student and faculty recruitment, student admissions and programming. The ABA’s current diversity standard requires that law schools provide “full opportunities” for “racial and ethnic minorities” and have a diverse student body “with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”

The ABA is the nation's largest voluntary lawyer group and much of its work is advisory, but law school accreditation is an area in which the group wields direct authority.

The ABA’s status as the sole accreditor of U.S. law schools is a “privilege, and mandatory diversity objectives are an abuse of that privilege, which is subject to revocation,” Bondi's letter reads.

The ABA Council on Feb. 21 halted enforcement of its current diversity and inclusion standard until Aug. 31 while it reviews a pending proposed revision to the rule. That decision — which Bondi applauded in her letter — came days after the Trump administration warned of cuts in federal funding for academic institutions and universities if they continue with diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Trump has also instructed federal agencies to investigate the bar associations’ diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Suspending enforcement of the current rule and delaying approval of the proposed rule would enable the ABA to incorporate forthcoming guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on diversity and inclusion, the ABA said. At the same time, the ABA said its “commitment to ensuring access to legal education to all people, including those who have been historically excluded from the legal profession, has not changed.”

The ABA's proposed revision, renamed the Access to Legal Education and the Profession standard, would require schools to demonstrate through “concrete action” a commitment to including groups that historically have been excluded from the legal profession “due to race, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status, Native American tribal citizenship, and/or socioeconomic background.”

That proposal still mandates illegal race and sex-based preferences, Bondi wrote in her letter to the ABA.

Read more:

American Bar Association suspends law school DEI rule enforcement

ABA walks back plan to remove 'race and ethnicity' from law school diversity rules