It will require Congressional action to stop accreditors from using variety requirements to pressure schools into violating the Supreme Court’s decision.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and others are calling for the party to completely and officially close the accreditation standard, which required law schools to undertake to diversity. The American Bar Association has temporarily suspended the accreditation standard.
Some people believe that America needs a law that directly outlaws DEI approval standards in higher education as a result of the disagreement.
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Commissioners Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow, head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, wrote to Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy,” Our plan had update existing law to make it obvious that accreditors are prohibited from pressuring specific colleges or universities into engaging in illegal cultural choices.”
Heriot and Kirsanow, who chair the committee, even serve on the National Center for Public Policy Research’s advisory board. Both Heriot and Kirsanow are law professors at the University of San Diego.
” Accreditors have long enthralled colleges and universities to ever greater levels of confidence.
outlined several instances of unlawful race-based accreditation requirements, including with the ABA, in their 16-page letter.
Heriot and Kirsanow argued that law enforcement needs to follow the Supreme Court’s SFFA decision to ensure that law schools can adhere to the “diversity guidelines” of their choosing without fear of accreditors, as long as they act within the parameters of the law.
The two presented evidence to support this claim that the ABA has admitted before the Supreme Court that its variety standards, including the SFFA circumstances in 2023, can only be met” can only be satisfied in many classrooms through favorable treatment based on race ( and thus by violating the law ) three days.”
Heriot and Kirsanow argued that “accreditors that intimidate colleges and universities into violating the law” will only make this problem worse while some institutions may” spy discriminate” in contravention of the Supreme Court decision.
After President Trump signed an executive order to “end improper La discrimination,” the organization suspended its DEI approval standard, which required the attorney general to develop a strategy to “deter” La programs in state and local bar associations.
The ABA was temporarily suspended on February 21 after the Department of Education recognized it as the “national primary law school accreditor.”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, which outlawed race-based admissions, more than a year and a half followed. The association is currently organizing a meeting in August to discuss the evolution of Standard 206’s diversity policy.
The ABA stressed in public statements that 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.”
Bondi later stated in a letter to the ABA on February 28 that the association has” just one appropriate course: The Standard must be repealed in its entirety,” despite the fact that the suspension is a “welcome development.”
Any requirement that law schools demonstrate” a commitment to diversity” is “deeply problematic,” she wrote, even without an explicit mandate requiring law schools to actually have diverse faculties and student bodies.
Take a look at the proposed amendment that the Council rejected on Friday. Schools would have had to blatantly violate civil rights laws in some of the proposed amendment’s provisions, such as intentionally pursuing a faculty and staff that are diverse in terms of race, gender, and gender identity. Race- and sex-based preferences are prohibited, and universities may not” simply establish” the same through “other means,” according to the Supreme Court’s explanation in SFFA. “
In response, David Brennen, the ABA’s Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, sent a letter reiterating that Standard 206 is currently suspended. He claimed that the ABA “has not and will not require a law school to violate the law in order to comply with its accreditation standards” even though no further action will be taken until the council’s next meeting in May.
The Florida Supreme Court has established a working group to address inquiries regarding” the ABA’s accreditation standards on racial and ethnic diversity in law schools and about the ABA’s active political engagement. The group will examine and reevaluate the state’s requirement for students to pass an ABA-accredited law school before taking the bar exam.
Florida’s legislature may also change the requirement that students must have an ABA-accredited degree in order to sit for the Florida bar exam.
Heriot stated in an interview with The College Fix that she is pleased with the ABA’s suspension but that it has the right to resume enforcement at any time. She stated that she thinks the association will” start applying them when it thinks it can.”
Additionally, she noted that other university accreditors continue to apply their diversity standards. In the end, it will require Congressional action to stop accreditors from using diversity standards to pressure schools into violating the Supreme Court’s decision, she said.
Numerous law schools did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment.
Liberty University’s spokesperson stated that the college fix “is currently conducting a thorough review of programs and policies to ensure compliance with the federal laws referenced in recent guidance from the Education Department.”
MORE: Former department official criticizes new DEI regulations for federal education grants
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