Nearly 500-page report alleges accreditor lacks independence from legal profession
The Education Department on Friday opened a formal process to strip the American Bar Association of its authority to accredit U.S. law schools, according to Assistant Secretary of Education David Barker. The recommendation to reject the ABA as the national accreditor for law schools is accompanied by a nearly 500-page department report that took more than a year to produce, according to Barker.
The report asserts that the ABA’s accreditation wing is not sufficiently independent of the legal profession — an independence the department says is designed to ensure accreditors focus on educational quality.
“We have said many times that accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel,” Barker said. “When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”
Melissa Hart, the chair of the ABA’s Accreditation Council, said the council is confident it complies with federal laws and the Education Department’s requirements.
“As a national accrediting body for American law schools, we remain focused on ensuring quality legal education that produces competent, ethical attorneys who are eligible for licensure,” Hart said.
“The outcomes produced by Council-accredited law schools are unmatched, and we continue the important work of accrediting law schools as our recognition process proceeds,” Hart said.
The ABA is the nation’s leading law-school accreditor. Accreditation is required for schools to access federal student-loan funds, and in most states, graduates of a school that is not ABA-approved cannot sit for the bar exam to become licensed lawyers.
If the ABA lost its accrediting power, law schools affiliated with a university would likely use the university’s regional accreditor instead, while unaffiliated law schools would need to find a new accreditor.
The Education Department’s initial recommendation goes next to a panel that reviews accreditors, which then makes a recommendation to Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent. Any final decision to reject the ABA is two steps and several months away, and the outcome is not certain.
Wider dispute between ABA and Trump administration
Conservatives have long accused the ABA of having a liberal bias, and the Labor Department and Federal Trade Commission have said they would not support their lawyers attending ABA events. The FTC has also said the ABA’s accreditation power represents anticompetitive behavior. Conservative groups and Republican-led states have separately targeted the organization over its diversity initiatives and its accreditation role.
Last year, after Trump signed a series of executive orders singling out law firms, the ABA accused the administration of using federal authority to punish firms for representing disfavored clients, filing lawsuits challenging administration policies, or maintaining internal diversity programs. The ABA also successfully sued the Justice Department for canceling grants used to train lawyers for representing victims of domestic and sexual violence.
Trump has called accreditation his “secret weapon” to remake higher education, and one of his executive orders last year made it easier for schools to switch accreditors to gain federal approval. The administration has also investigated medical schools, alleging they failed to eliminate affirmative action, and earlier froze research funding at some universities while demanding changes in faculty and curriculum.