Pacific Legal Foundation, Unconstitutional Accreditation Pressures Force Law Schools to Discriminate against Faculty and Students:

Discrimination on the basis of race or sex in law school hiring and admissions is illegal, but the American Bar Association (ABA), the only federally approved accreditor of JD programs in the United States, has pushed law schools to discriminate anyway. This research in brief reports the results of a Pacific Legal Foundation survey conducted via public records requests of the 50 best public law schools (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report). Forty-five schools responded. The results indicate that law schools often face pressure from the ABA to adopt racial preferences in their admissions and hiring practices to meet the ABA’s preferred demographics. …

The ABA has vigorously enforced its diversity standards. It investigated George Mason University School of Law extensively starting in 2000 for supposed violations of its diversity standards and only gave up after the school quietly lowered its admissions standards to satisfy the ABA’s demands. …

Figure 1 displays the number of law schools that received qualitative evaluations of a variety of accreditation diversity standards. Each category aligns with a question in the accreditation report. No more than 15 of the 50 law schools received qualitative evaluations in any particular category.

Law school accreditation reports demonstrate how the ABA, as the sole federally recognized accreditor of JD programs, has abused its monopoly power as a quasi-governmental regulator to push law schools to adopt race and sex preferences in admissions and hiring. Dozens of law schools have been praised or blamed, have faced adverse action from the ABA, or have even been required to use race and sex preferences to meet ABA’s idea of diversity requirements. This evidence validates media reports and academic articles describing instances of such pressure. Narrowly amending the Higher Education Act would prevent this unlawful pressure and safeguard state and federal civil rights.

Just the News, Records Show DEI Standards Used to Pressure Law Schools to Adopt Racist Practices: Report

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