ABA’s Diversity Requirement Suspension Not Enough For Pam Bondi. (Chris Williams, Above the Law blog, March 6, 2025)

In 1985, at a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., I successfully worked with other Southern U.S. law school students to pass an American Bar Association Law Student Division resolutions on law school reform. We passed eleven (11) of fifteen (15) resolutions we presented. (That's a "batting average" of .733) One of our resolutions recommend that the ABA accredited law schools from discriminating on the basis of disability, and sexual orientation, which is now ABA policy. We also targeted legacy admissions, which I was just beginning to learn about. (We called it "family background). Our other proposed standards covered issues like law review selection procedures, library hours and requiring law schools to have legal clinics to help students become better lawyers,

Now, bullies want to take away ABA's power to accredit law schools. See the article from Above the Law blog, below.

Query: Does U.S. Attorney General PAMELA JO BONDI has delusions of adequacy.? You tell me.

From Above the Law blog:

ABA’s Diversity Requirement Suspension Not Enough For Pam Bondi

Any mention would be too much of one. 

By Chris Williams on March 06, 2025

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty)

The ABA’s attempt at redefining the significance of diversity post SFFA v. Harvard and the Trump administration has been a slow process of ceding to the right. A nothingburger redefining of diversity that lacked teeth and a “we won’t really act on it” approach to their diversity requirement for accreditation later, and now Pam Bondi is hastening up the cremation process. Reuters has coverage:

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called for the American Bar Association to immediately repeal its law school diversity rule and scrap a planned revision of that standard in a letter to the ABA posted to a social media site on Wednesday by a U.S. Justice Department official.

Bondi’s letter, posted on social media site X, also warned that the ABA’s authority as the government-sanctioned accreditor of U.S. law schools—a position it has held since 1952—can be revoked.

My money is on this being enough for the ABA to give up the pretense of still thinking about diversity and dropping the requirement. That said, it would be nice to see who the Trump administration would vest with accreditation authority should the ABA hold to its diversity guns. They’ve already tapped the WWE for their education expertise, maybe they’ll move on to some other conservative platform — Joe Rogan, perhaps? You might not even have to bother with law school with him in charge; just go on the podcast and hobnob about how great of a writer Scalia was and you’ll be greenlit to practice if the episode ratings are high enough! If Big Balls can get a coveted position in government with little to no real work experience, why can’t you go transactional after sharing some SCOTUS trivia on radio?

Playing the long game, the consequences of getting DEI out of law school will ruffle a few feathers. As much as the media likes to spin Dontravious and Jamal as proof that law schools are full of DEI, the actual culprits are Donna and Jessica. Just look at the numbers; it’s hard to talk about law school diversity without mentioning that women made up ~56% of the entering student body in 2024, which trends with them being the majority for the last few years now. The initial lawsuit phases will target law schools for having too many Black students, but the suits alleging sex discrimination for admitting too many women will be soon to follow.

See you in a couple of days when the ABA finally caves in. 

US Attorney General Presses ABA To Drop Law School DEI Rule Or Risk Losing Accreditor Status [Reuters]