Trump administration recommends stripping American Bar Association of law school oversight authority

Education Department staff on Friday suggested ending the American Bar Association's ability to oversee law school programs across the country amid fierce Republican criticism of the organization.

The association has had government approval to oversee law schools since 1952, but agency staff said its next renewal bid should be denied because of alleged conflicts of interest. The association was last approved to accredit nearly 200 law schools in 2021, with its oversight authority up for review next month.

The recommendation marks a major development in President Donald Trump's efforts to reshape the college oversight system, which he has criticized as too liberal. Critics fear this will politicize the accreditation process, but the department's skepticism of close relationships between accreditors and trade associations is shared across the political aisle.

Accreditors are the nongovernmental agencies tasked with reviewing educational quality. For freestanding law schools that aren't affiliated with a university, the ABA determines if the school can accept federal student aid.

The status report provides the first glimpse at what the department might do in reviewing ABA's renewal bid. The staff's findings will be reviewed by an advisory board, and then a senior department official will make the call.

"An initial recommendation from Department staff represents one step in the regular recognition process that the Council and other accreditors periodically complete," said Melissa Hart, chair of the ABA's Accreditation Council, in a statement. "A hearing with [the advisory committee] is the next step in that process, and we're confident the Council will address any concerns the Department may have at that hearing."

The Education Department declined to comment.

Republicans in Congress have been hammering the ABA over its diversity, equity and inclusion standards. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), a House Oversight task force chair, in July slammed the association for defending diversity efforts in the legal profession, saying that it "plays an outsized role in American law."

"So what has the ABA done with this impressive accumulation of power and prestige?" he said. "Unfortunately, it appears that the ABA — ideologically captured by radical leftists — has continuously pursued discriminatory DEI practices. This included requiring law schools to consider race as a factor for admissions, and to evaluate racial discrimination over merit in order to diversify the profession."

The agency's report highlighted that the association's diversity, equity and inclusion standard wasn't suspended until February 2025, nearly two years after the Supreme Court decided colleges could no longer consider race in its admissions process.

The ABA's accreditation arm announced shortly after the report published that it will be meeting in September to vote over repealing its diversity standard.

The ABA functions as both a trade association for lawyers and judges as well as an accreditor for law schools. The Education Department argues in its status report that it did not demonstrate that these two functions were "separate and independent."

The department's latest proposed rule overhauling the college oversight system said accreditors and trade associations need to be separate to prevent conflicts of interest. The department and other higher education experts have said that when an accreditor is too close to a trade or membership group, the oversight is often managed by the same people who lobby for the industry.

But two accreditation experts say this loss of federal recognition might not have a dramatic impact on law schools.

Antoinette Flores, vice president of federal policy and government relations for the Council for Higher Education Accreditation — a membership organization of colleges that also recognizes accrediting agencies — said she only knows of nine schools where ABA is a gatekeeper of federal student aid dollars.

If ABA were to lose recognition, those nine schools would have to find another accrediting agency to be able to accept federal student aid, but "they would have time to do so," she said.

Bob Shireman, a Democratic appointee of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity — the panel that counsels the Education Department on recognizing accreditors and would consider the staff's recommendation — said it's possible that losing recognition wouldn't have "much of an impact on law schools."

"I don't really understand why they want Education Department recognition because they have so few schools, and it's mostly the states that give them their power," Shireman said.

Confusion over the line between the accreditor and trade association within the ABA was evident at a House Oversight hearing in July, where GOP lawmakers pressed then-ABA President Michelle Behnke on the policies, which she defended. But Behnke's position isn't involved in the accreditation process. The process instead is overseen by the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the accreditation arm of the association.

After the hearing, Barry Currier, former managing director of accreditation and legal education at the ABA, publicly said its accreditation council should be separated from the larger organization.

"I would be pleased to be wrong, but I am increasingly convinced that the Council cannot survive in its current role unless it separates from the big ABA," he wrote in a Substack post.

Conservative critics of the ABA celebrated the news.

May Mailman, a former senior White House official in both Trump administrations, said the legal organization was a "left-wing advocacy group" that would use its position to "force DEI hiring, recruitment, and inflate the cost of education."

"This will be one of the most meaningful changes to open doors for Americans and steer legal culture toward justice, not radical indoctrination," Mailman, now director of the Independent Women's Law Center, a conservative legal advocacy organization, said in a post on X.

Other groups critical of the ABA's diversity requirements said they look forward to seeing how the next advisory committee meeting plays out.

"The American Bar Association chose political activism over political neutrality long ago, diminishing the legal education field in the process," Nicole Neily, president of Defending Education, a conservative advocacy group, said in a statement. "Today's staff report reflects that reality, and we look forward to the September [advisory committee] meeting where the ABA's failings will no doubt be dissected in greater detail."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report misstated the accreditor recognition process.