Watchdog Asks Ed Department To Block ABA’s Renewal

Opposition to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “role as the federal government’s exclusive law school accreditor” is growing ahead of its September renewal hearing, as the left-wing organization’s history of pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and other ideologies make them unfit for such a powerful position.

In a Thursday letter obtained by The Federalist, government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) urged the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reject the ABA’s renewal as the only recognized accreditor for America’s law schools.

“The ABA has a lengthy record of misusing its accreditation power to enforce ideological conformity, require discriminatory DEI policies, and engage in partisan and potentially anti-competitive conduct. It has proven itself completely unqualified to serve as a neutral gatekeeper to the legal profession,” PPT communications director Alexa Moutevelis told The Federalist. “The Department of Education should no longer allow this organization to strong-arm law schools into forcing racially discriminatory programming requirements and admissions standards. The freedom of our nation’s brightest young legal minds depends on it.”

McMahon will have the ultimate statutory authority to determine if the ABA continues to be a “reliable authority” to have accreditation powers.

The letter details the ABA’s many offenses related to DEI and other left-wing ideological goals, some of which it says are unlawfully discriminatory and are in direct contravention of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to rein in accreditors’ institutional capture of American universities.

The ABA considers DEI to be a “strategic imperative” for itself and for the legal profession as a whole. “It permeates everything we do internally and externally as an association,” the ABA states.

However, because of the Trump administration’s focus on rooting out the discriminatory ideology, the ABA encourages schools to come up with under-the-table work-arounds so that they can maintain the ideology while not being the subject of federal scrutiny and disciplinary action.

“The ABA effectively requires schools to find creative ways to avoid constitutional or statutory requirements that conflict with its DEI mandates,” the letter states [emphasis in original]. “It conditions accreditation on violating the spirit of the law, if not the literal text.”

The ABA’s Standard 206 effectively enforces affirmative action hiring at law schools as a criteria for accreditation, and Standard 303(c) required all accredited law schools to teach “bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” both at the beginning of law school and prior to graduation.

The ABA claims it paused Standard 206 and is considering the repeal of 303(c), but the PPT letter says the ABA is acting in “bad faith.” “With these issues still pending, one might even surmise that the ABA intends to continue to run out the clock until a more favorable administration takes office,” it states.

The letter quotes the ABA 2025–2026 Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, which states, “The requirement of a constitutional provision or statute that purports to prohibit consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions or employment decisions is not a justification for a school’s non-compliance with Standard 206. A law school that is subject to such constitutional or statutory provisions would have to demonstrate the commitment required by Standard 206 by means other than those prohibited by the applicable constitutional or statutory provisions.”

PPT also notes that that the ABA was unclear about how to apply 303(c), “resulting in many schools ’embedding mandatory DEI seminars, implicit bias workshops, identity-based programming, and race-conscious curricular modules into already crowded academic schedules.’”

“While the ABA has temporarily suspended the specific DEI accreditation requirements that directly conflict with the EO and the recent Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, it is clear that discriminatory ideology is baked into the core of its guiding principles and could reemerge at any time,” the letter states. “Beyond this, an organization with a lengthy track record of abusing its accreditation power to enforce ideological conformity, engaging in anti-competitive behavior that could violate antitrust law, and participating in partisan political behavior is ill-suited and unqualified to serve in such a crucial role as a neutral gatekeeper to the legal profession.”

The ABA has been doing DEI enforcement for many years, and well before it was part of the popular political conversation, as PPT noted it adopted “mandating an explicit quota” where Continuing Legal Education panels needed a minimum of “diverse members” in 2016. In 2000, the ABA went after George Mason University law school for refusing to use racialized admissions tactics. The ABA threatened the accreditation of the school unless it implemented racial preferences.

In 2021, the ABA sent “threatening letters” to Ohio Northern University “questioning its commitment to diversity and inclusion,” the letter states.

It also filed a brief in favor of racial discrimination in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, which ultimately deemed affirmative action unconstitutional. After that case was decided, the ABA was still defiant in its promotion of racial discrimination, publishing a course on “how to future-proof your DEI strategy” and “identify actionable strategies to help companies withstand anti-DEI pressure,” the letter states.

The ABA’s focus is not just racial, it also targets religious institutions for adhering to their religion. It sent two noncompliance notices to St. Thomas University College of Law because it questioned whether non-Catholic students would be discriminated against.

According to the letter, the ABA persistently attempts to put its thumb on the scale of conservative judicial appointees, claiming they are less qualified to serve than their left-wing friends. It may even be trying to get away with saying it is objective by giving higher qualification ratings to older Republican appointees who are in their waning years on the bench and are almost certainly not in consideration for future nominations.

“The ABA is also an active participant in the nation’s culture wars. It has filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court that defend nationwide abortion, oppose Second Amendment rights, and support the most extreme transgender ideology,” the letter states. “The organization supports a range of progressive criminal justice reforms, including eliminating cash bail and mandatory minimum sentences, and expanding ‘alternatives to incarceration.’”

Some states have stopped or diminished the ABA’s stranglehold on accreditation and bar approval, including Florida, Texas, and Alabama, while Ohio and Tennessee are reviewing the ABA’s influence.

“At a minimum, this power should be suspended until such time as it fully separates its accreditation activities into an independent organization,” the letter states. “The ABA can either be a participant in the political and culture wars or a neutral accreditor of law schools, but not both. At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves a simple question: has the ABA fairly and responsibly exercised its exclusive grant of federal accreditation power? The answer appears to be a resounding no.”

As The Federalist reported, the Trump administration on Wednesday published rules that would open the door for other accreditors to be recognized across American higher education, as Trump himself recognizes that accreditation is the “secret weapon” for controlling universities.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.