The American Bar Association — the unelected monopoly that decides which law schools get to exist — just voted to gut its DEI requirements. Not because anyone on their accreditation council had a sudden moral awakening. Because Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Ohio told them to pound sand, the Trump administration aimed both barrels, and the ABA finally did the math on self-preservation versus ideology.
Spoiler: ideology lost. It always does when the bill comes due.
The ABA's own Standards Committee approved the elimination of Standard 206, which mandated diversity and inclusion in law school admissions and hiring, and Standard 303(c), which required coursework on "bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism." They're also revising Standard 205 on nondiscrimination and Standard 207 on disabilities requirements. The whole DEI scaffolding is coming down — not with a bang, but with the quiet shuffling of bureaucrats who got caught.
Texas was the first state to sever ties with the ABA back in January 2026, telling the accreditation monopoly it was no longer welcome to gatekeep the Lone Star State's law schools. Florida followed. Then Tennessee. Then Ohio. Four state supreme courts essentially said: we don't need your permission to train lawyers, especially when your "standards" are just ideology with a dress code.
The Trump administration piled on. The Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Education all turned their attention to the ABA's cozy little monopoly. Nicholas Kent, Under Secretary at the Department of Education, has a hearing scheduled for September on the ABA's accreditation recognition. The message was unmistakable: reform or lose the keys to the kingdom.
The ABA's own Standards Committee memo acknowledged that these threats "imminently" threaten the ABA's accreditation role. Translation: we're about to become irrelevant and we know it.
Not everyone inside the ABA went quietly. According to Just The News, the committee received 50 comments during a 45-day feedback window, and only 2 of those 50 supported eliminating Standard 206. The Critical Legal Collective, a scholar-activist group, blasted the move in the memo as something that "demonstrates capitulation to the current federal administration" and showed a "lack of integrity and courage."
Capitulation. They said it like it's a bad thing.
Here's the beautiful part: the Supreme Court told them this was coming back in 2023 with the Students for Fair Admissions ruling against racial preferences. The legal profession had two full years to clean house. They didn't. They dug in. And now they're scrambling.
Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President of Defending Ed, isn't popping champagne yet: "Approval may take until 2027 — so I'll believe it when I see it." Smart woman. These are lawyers, after all. They'll drag their feet until the last possible second.
And the numbers prove the institutional rot runs deep. Even now, 62 of nearly 200 law schools still require DEI coursework. Another 72 maintain DEI offices or rebranded versions of them. They just swapped the name tag. Same commissar, different lanyard.
Bestselling novelist and inventor M.A. Rothman nailed it: "This is the post-SFFA cleanup the legal profession resisted for two years. The plumbing finally caught up." The plumbing. That's exactly what this is — the sewage backing up on the people who refused to fix the pipes.
The ABA's annual meeting is set for August 2026 in Chicago, where the full body will vote on these changes. Don't expect a profile in courage. Expect a room full of expensive suits nodding along to whatever keeps their monopoly intact.
Cowards folding under pressure is still a win. We'll take it.
