Last month, responding to Trump administration pressure, the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, announced that it would temporarily suspend its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements until late August. This is significant: universities rely on accreditation to access federal funds, and organizations like the ABA have long used that leverage to push identity politics in higher education. But without congressional action, accreditors could reinstate DEI mandates in the future.
Like many accreditors, the ABA has used its accreditation authority to encourage law schools to enact racial preferences in admissions, programming, and recruitment activities. Throughout the 2000s, for example, the ABA threatened the accreditation status of George Mason University School of Law and the Charleston School of Law for the lack of diversity among their law students.
The Trump administration has now forced a shift in the ABA’s stance. In a February “Dear Colleague” letter, the Department of Education clarified its interpretation of the landmark Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. “The law is clear,” wrote the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, that “treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”
For now, the ABA has abandoned DEI enforcement. But to make this change permanent, Congress must bar it--and other accreditors--from imposing diversity mandates. U.S. Civil Rights Commission members Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow have proposed one potential way to do this: amend 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1099 to allow the Secretary of Education to deem any accreditor illegitimate if it imposes race-, sex-, or national origin-based standards.
Implementing a change of this kind is essential, even after SFFA and state-level bans on DEI practices in higher education. The Trump administration’s colorblind interpretation of SFFA can easily be reversed by a future White House. And accreditors still have the power to compel colleges to adopt diversity programs. In 2024, for example, accreditor Liaison Committee on Medical Education required medical schools to engage “in ongoing, systematic, and focused recruitment and retention activities, to achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes” among students. Despite a state DEI ban, the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine was able to keep its Office of Health Parity (renamed the Program for Access & Engagement) to meet accreditation compliance standards. In a December 2024 Wall Street Journal article, Iowa lawmaker Henry Stone spotlighted an excerpt appearing on the office’s website, which notes that it “strives to achieve excellence through the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” too.
Congress must intervene to ensure that the ABA and other accreditors permanently abandon their cynical and divisive diversity policies.
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