The American Bar Association is poised to eliminate references to “race and ethnicity” from its law school diversity and inclusion rules to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling barring colleges from considering race in admissions.
The ABA body that accredits law schools voted on Friday to gather public comments on a revised rule under which schools must provide access to “all persons including those with identities that historically have been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.”
That would replace the current rule that schools provide “full opportunities” for “racial and ethnic minorities” and have a diverse student body “with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”
Republican attorneys general from 21 states in June told the ABA that the current diversity and inclusion standard runs afoul of the court’s ruling “by requiring explicitly illegal consideration of race.” Two weeks later, 19 Democratic attorneys general responded with their own letter defending the legality of the current standard.
The ABA was already working to revise the standard when it received the dueling letters, but the new version goes further than previous proposals by eliminating references to race, ethnicity and gender, among other things.
The ABA will circulate the proposal for public comment and could approve it as early as its meeting in November. The change would then need final approval by the ABA's House of Delegates, which next meets in February.
The latest proposal shifts focus away from a “laundry list of identities” to the rule’s larger access goal, said University of Oklahoma law professor Carla Pratt, who sits on the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
The proposal also calls for the “diversity and inclusion” standard to be renamed the “access to legal education and the profession” standard. The only reference to race appears in guidance clarifying that the rules don’t require schools to take race or other identity characteristics into account in admissions or hiring decisions.
The proposed change comes at a time when diversity and inclusion initiatives are under increasing fire. The committee that developed the new rule reviewed the Supreme Court’s ruling, anti-diversity and inclusion laws adopted by various states, as well as the various letters from state attorneys general, Pratt said.
Read more:
21 states say ABA's law school diversity rule runs afoul of U.S. Supreme Court decision
19 states defend ABA law school diversity rule amid Republican warning
