ABA Legal Ed council repeals DEI standard

Home Web First ABA Legal Ed council repeals DEI standard Legal Education ABA Legal Ed council repeals DEI standard The council for the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted Tuesday to repeal its contentious standard regarding diversity and inclusion, effective immediately. (Image from Shutterstock) The council for the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted Tuesday to repeal its contentious standard regarding diversity and inclusion, effective immediately. The decision on the divisive Standard 206 came after 35 minutes of debate at a special meeting hosted virtually Tuesday specifically to address the standard, which has been suspended since February 2025. In a 10-6 vote with one abstention, the council repealed the standard, which required that law schools 'demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing full opportunities for the study of law and entry into the profession by members of underrepresented groups' and 'having a faculty and staff that are diverse with respect to gender, race and ethnicity.' 'The council believes that national accreditation of law schools is in the best interests of law students, the legal profession and the public, and we can best serve in this role with continued recognition by state supreme courts and the Department of Education,' said Melissa Hart, the council's chair, in a statement. 'Repealing Standard 206 was necessary to preserve recognition by a growing number of state courts, as well as the department.' According to newly adjusted rules passed by the ABA House of Delegates last month, the Tuesday meeting was the soonest that the council could meet to vote on the standard. The urgency stems from the scheduled appearance by the council—the sole national accreditor for law schools—before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, or the NACIQI, in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23 and 24 as part of the five-year review of its accreditation status by the Department of Education. There has been strong opposition to the repeal at recent meetings and in comments sent to the council. Even some who supported the repeal of the hot-button standard said they actually opposed repealing it. But supporters said the council's hands have been forced by a series of moves by the Trump administration. 'This is not an emblematic or easy vote for anybody here,' Hart said at the meeting. 'It's not a value choice about this particular thing; it's a sort of a pragmatic question about how do we retain that national accreditation status.' A yearslong fight Whether or not today's defensive move impacts the chances of the council, a separate and independent entity from the bar association, of retaining its accreditor status remains to be seen. On Aug. 21, the Education Department issued an 86-page report asserting the council isn't sufficiently independent of the the profession to ensure it focuses on quality education. That came just days after the Department of Education proposed a new rule making it easier to approve new accreditors and forcing accreditors to scrap DEI policies, replacing them with policies that value 'intellectual diversity.' Under the proposed rule, higher education accreditors would not be allowed to require affirmative action-type policies, which the department characterized as discriminatory. The fight regarding Standard 206 is years long. It got hot after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision to strike down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and University of North Carolina. Some states have struck down DEI requirements. In April 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to assess whether to suspend or terminate the council as the government's official law school accreditor, citing its 'unlawful 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' requirements,' as part of an executive order focused on reforming higher education accreditation. To prevent law schools from choosing between following the court's ruling or meeting the council's accreditation standards, the council voted in February 2025 to suspend Standard 206, which required law schools 'demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing full opportunities for the study of law and entry into the profession by members of underrepresented groups' and 'having a faculty and staff that are diverse with respect to gender, race and ethnicity.' Had it not been repealed, the standard was scheduled to remain suspended until Aug. 31, 2027. As the accreditation process moves forward, council members are carefully watching the Education Department's responses to other accreditors now under review. On May 8, the council's standards committee memo cited recent communications from the education department to other higher education accreditors that expect them to abolish—not merely suspend—DEI standards. The Education Department's March 16 letters to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education 'indicated that any application of racial diversity standards would be viewed by the department as a violation of federal law.' These letters 'must inform the council's decision making,' the memo adds. Meanwhile, the ABA council faces other sources of pressure as its exclusive accreditor status is changing. Since early this year, the supreme courts of the Republican-leaning states of Alabama, Texas and Florida made moves to break ties with the council. Other state supreme courts, including Ohio, currently are reevaluating ABA accreditation. In its efforts to retain accreditation status, the council has made other moves this year to declare its independence. In January, the council set up a new unit focused on law school oversight to underscore that it operates separately from the ABA, a target of criticism from the Trump administration on a host of issues. There are 198 ABA-accredited law schools. Most states require applicants to the state bar to be graduates of an ABA-accredited law school. See also: ABA Legal Ed council will decide Sept. 8 whether DEI standard is repealed; will it matter? ABA Legal Ed council votes to repeal diversity and inclusion standard Diversity standard should be abolished, standards committee says to ABA Legal Ed council Comments mixed on proposals to pull back law school diversity standards