ABA Repeals Law School Diversity Standard Two Weeks Before Federal Accreditation Hearing

The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted 10-6, with one abstention, on Tuesday to repeal Standard 206, the accreditation rule requiring law schools to demonstrate a "concrete" commitment to diversity in admissions, faculty hiring and staffing, according to the ABA Journal. The repeal took effect immediately.

The vote came after just 35 minutes of debate at a special virtual meeting called specifically to address the standard, which had already been suspended since February 2025, the ABA Journal reported.

Why now

The timing traces directly to a Department of Education review. Reuters reporter Karen Sloan wrote that the Education Department recommended last month that the council lose its federal recognition as the accreditor for nearly 200 U.S. law schools. A federal advisory panel, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, is scheduled to take up that recognition question on Sept. 23 and 24 in Washington, D.C.

The council has held that federal recognition since 1952, according to Department of Education records cited by Hot Air. Losing it would strip most freestanding law schools of a path to eligibility for federal student aid.

Council chair Melissa Hart did not argue the standard was flawed or unnecessary. She framed the repeal strictly as institutional survival. "The council believes that national accreditation of law schools is in the best interests of law students, the legal profession and the public, and we can best serve in this role with continued recognition by state supreme courts and the Department of Education," Hart said in a statement reported by both the ABA Journal and Reason. "Repealing Standard 206 was necessary to preserve recognition by a growing number of state courts, as well as the department."

At the meeting, Hart added: "This is not an emblematic or easy vote for anybody here. It's not a value choice."

The backstory

Standard 206 required schools to show, through faculty hiring, admissions and student programming, that they were providing "full opportunities for the study of law and entry into the profession by members of underrepresented groups," per the ABA Journal's account of the rule's text. Hot Air's John Sexton noted the diversity provisions trace back to the 1970s and 1980s, with the faculty diversity subsection added later, and the rule had existed in its current form since 2014.

Reason columnist Josh Blackman describes Standard 206 as something "law school deans rushed through the process in the wake of George Floyd's death" and repealed "barely six years later." The documented history in Hot Air's reporting shows the rule's core diversity requirements predate 2020 by decades, even if later revisions responded to the broader post-2020 push on campus diversity policy.

The pressure campaign against DEI accreditation standards accelerated after President Trump's April 2025 executive order, "Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education," which accused accreditors of being "improperly focused on compelling adoption of discriminatory ideology, rather than on student outcomes," according to text quoted by Hot Air.

Reaction from both directions

The Legal Defense Fund condemned the repeal outright, calling Standard 206 a "lawful goal" and urging law schools to keep pursuing diversity voluntarily even without the accreditation mandate, according to a statement cited by TaxProf Blog.

On the right, the reaction split between vindication and skepticism. PJ Media's David Manney argued the ABA only abandoned diversity rules once its own accreditation power was threatened, writing that "the timing deserves attention." Blackman, writing for Reason, took the opposite tack, arguing the repeal is mostly symbolic. He predicted law schools will keep complying with the substance of the old standard voluntarily, that the Education Department won't be satisfied by a repeal made "at the barrel of a gun," and that nothing stops the ABA from reinstating a similar rule later. He also noted the vote itself was hardly unanimous: six council members voted no, and one member abstained rather than take a public position either way.

What's actually unresolved

Whether the repeal will be enough to save the council's accreditor status is an open question none of the reporting answers. Reuters explicitly says it remains "unclear" whether Tuesday's vote will satisfy federal reviewers. The Education Department has also separately questioned whether the accreditation council is sufficiently independent from the ABA's broader membership organization, a structural issue the repeal does not address.

NACIQI will take up the question on Sept. 23 and 24. Until then, nearly 200 JD programs are waiting to find out whether their primary path to federal student aid eligibility survives the review, and whether Standard 206's repeal was enough, or beside the point.