ABA Accreditation Council Repeals Diversity Standard

Law schools are no longer required to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion among students, faculty or staff, following a special meeting Tuesday where the American Bar Association’s accreditation council voted 10 to 6 to eliminate the standard.

The decision is final and takes effect immediately. It does not, however, prevent law schools from continuing to prioritize diversity on campus; rather, it bars the council as a quality-assurance group from mandating that colleges do so in order to remain accredited. Other diversity-related standards, including one concerning curriculum, are still up for discussion among the council.

Known as Standard 206, the now-repealed quality metric has been a topic of debate for years. Critics argue that it violated the 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning the consideration of race in college admissions; proponents call that view an overreaching interpretation of the high court’s opinion. More recently, the Trump administration has cited the standard in an executive order as one of many alleged infringements on the regulations that define which accreditors qualify for federal recognition—a status that allows them to deem a college eligible for federal student aid and that can be key to ensuring students qualify for an attorney’s license.

The Education Department officially recommended that the ABA accreditation council be stripped of its recognition in August, though a final decision has not been made. A department advisory committee will further discuss the recommendation and vote on it at its next meeting, which begins Sept. 23; after that, the department’s under secretary, Nicholas Kent, will make a final decision.

Some higher education experts suspect the Trump administration has already made up its mind and will derecognize the council despite its vote to repeal Standard 206. Others hope it will sway both the committee and Kent in favor of the council, formally known as the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

Under the council’s procedural guidelines, members can vote anonymously, though four of the six who opposed repealing the standard formally put their decision on the record. Three voting members were absent and another abstained; four other members could not vote because they also serve on the ABA’s governing body or as a liaison for another arm of the association, which the council is supposed to remain independent of. The council’s chair, Melissa Hart, also did not cast a ballot, as she does not vote unless needed to break a tie.

Several council members who voted anonymously made it clear that their intention was not to vote against diversity or inclusion. Rather, they suggested that repealing the standard was necessary to preserve the council’s ability to ensure that students who attend an ABA-accredited college can apply for an attorney’s license in all 50 states, allowing the ABA council to continue serving as the nation’s main law school accreditor.

David Brennen, the council’s interim treasurer and former dean of the University of Kentucky College of Law, said he wasn’t always in favor of repealing Standard 206; as recently as last year he wrote a law review article about the value of diversity. But after reconciling his personal views on the subject with his role as a council member, Brennen said it was in the best interest of those he represented to terminate the standard.

“I’ve watched very carefully the way a lot of states—state supreme courts in particular—have looked at the issue of Standard 206, and despite my own personal view, they characterize it as a sort of political requirement. Although I disagree with that characterization, I can understand how they’ve gotten there, and I don’t want to see that be an inhibitor,” he said, adding that it could force the council to “splinter” into as many as a dozen accreditors.

“That will be problematic for students in so many ways, and problematic for law schools in so many ways,” Brennen said. For that reason and others, “I have come around to being able to vote for repeal of Standard 206, and I think that still allows me to abide by my long-standing personal beliefs and the value of affirmative action.”

Others, including council chair Hart and Dayanna Parra-Woodall, the law student member, agreed that the council’s chief responsibility is to be pragmatic and preserve a national system of legal accreditation. Council member Steven Bahls, president emeritus of Augustana College, added that while the accreditation council would no longer be able to require diversity among law schools, other groups could still promote it.

But many of those who opposed the repeal—including two of the four members who could not vote because of their position on other ABA decision-making bodies—said the organization must continue to prioritize and enforce its commitment to diversity, adding that it should not be viewed as a political issue the council must back away from to remain nonpartisan.

Deidré Keller, a distinguished visiting professor at Stetson Law and one of the members who publicly recorded her vote, said she could not “in good conscience” vote to repeal the diversity standard, suggesting that a vote against the standard amounted to a vote against DEI.

“This body sits at a particular crossroads of higher education and the law, accrediting schools across the country that are preparing the next generation of lawyers in a diverse America,” she said. “It is incumbent on us to prepare diverse lawyers for serving a diverse public, and however we cast the decision to repeal, it will necessarily be read as a lack of commitment to that project.”

Beto Juárez, a retired dean and professor at the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law in Florida, who also publicly recorded his vote against the repeal, said that while he agreed remaining a national accreditor and ensuring interstate licensure access should be the council’s goal, he did not think repealing Standard 206 was the best way to “carry that out”—especially when the nation is at a critical juncture akin to the Civil War or the civil rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

“Just as during those prior inflection points, we are all being required to make difficult decisions. And for me, that means that I have to stand up for the values that I have articulated and defended throughout my entire career, and therefore I am going to vote no,” Juárez said.

Just before the vote, Hart said she couldn’t ignore the reality that supporting DEI “has become political fodder in our current culture.”

“It’s unfortunate,” she said. But “it’s political either way, and what state supreme courts really want is to take political issues off the table when it comes to accreditation.”