As an attorney for many years, I have often watched with great frustration at various actions taken by the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA accredits approximately 200 law schools in the U.S. In fact, in many states a law school graduate may not sit for the bar exam without the ABA’s approval of the graduate’s law school. However, it is quite apparent that for decades the ABA has been a left-of-center advocacy group rather than an objective, balanced professional legal association.
I remember as a young attorney thinking to myself “how does the ABA purport to speak for so many attorneys—holding very diverse viewpoints—who adamantly disagree with its official positions on important issues?” Among these issues with which I and many other attorneys disagree are the ABA’s pro-abortion position, its strong support of gun control and its adamant insistence on affirmative action. Yet another, newer, form of bias is mandating that law schools who receive accreditation from it have in place strict so-called Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) policies that are also unfair and discriminatory.
I have also been incensed in the past when highly regarded, very well-qualified federal judge nominees, including to the U.S. Supreme Court, were given a “not qualified” rating—solely based upon ‘viewpoint’ discrimination—because the nominee was a conservative who believed in adhering to a strict and textual reading of statutes and the U.S. Constitution. In other words, there was no question about the nominee’s competence, but the ABA’s clear ideological bias prevented an endorsement of the nominee.
Well, the Trump Department of Education is addressing this by eliminating the ABA’s accreditation stranglehold, revoking its federal recognition as an approved legal accreditor for federal student financial aid purposes.
As the Wall Street Journal observes in a recent article entitled “Busting the ABA’s Accreditation Monopoly,” … “the ABA has not adequately altered and modified its policies in light of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which clearly held that race preferences are illegal. This Supreme Court decision was handed down in 2023, yet the ABA “continued into the 2024-2025 review cycle to provide training and evaluate law schools” based on the old standard under which the ABA “had told schools to show ‘concrete’ efforts toward diversity and inclusion in their student bodies and faculties.” (WSJ, 8-29, 30-2026).
WSJ further notes as an example that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has this month accused Duke Law School of “illegally discriminating by race in its incoming classes from 2023-2025” after the DOJ determined that “white and Asian applicants denied admission had higher median LSAT scores than black students who were accepted.” (Id.).
Critics of this action by the Trump Administration Education Department are committed to guaranteeing outcomes. However, to do so violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. As the Supreme Court has clarified in many ways, America is a nation of laws that derive from our U.S. Constitution which contains the fundamental guarantee of equal protection for ALL of us. That principle of unanimous and intrinsic equality cannot be preserved if we continue to classify Americans strictly by race.
There is no more fundamentally American principle than genuine equality: from Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration that “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” to the thundering echo of that truth decades later by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who dreamed that “one day my children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
In sum, even beyond law school accreditation and the review of judicial nominations, the ABA almost always sides with the Lunatic Left and the Democrat leadership in the U.S. Congress, on the wrong side of a wide array of 70-30 and 80-20 issues. This anti-majority minority activism is harmful to the nation and to the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of a ‘Government by Consent of the Governed.’
President Trump is correct in putting an end to the ABA’s toxic monopoly on law school accreditation and the judicial nominee review process. The ABA is free to move its organization in whatever political or ideological direction it wishes and advance whatever causes it deems important. However, it may not do so while it has the privilege of holding a monopoly on the granting of, and maintaining of, accreditation of the majority of American law schools or “rating” of judicial nominees.
Shreveport attorney, Royal Alexander, worked in D.C. in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 8 years for two different Members of Congress from Louisiana.