Justice Department threatens antitrust probe of American Bar Association

Letter adds to series of Trump administration actions against the ABA

The Justice Department has told the American Bar Association it may face an antitrust investigation if the group does not change accreditation rules limiting how much part-time adjunct professors can teach first-year law students, according to an Oct. 7 letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The letter was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official, and addressed to the ABA’s accreditation council, whose quality standards cover most U.S. law schools. Woodward wrote that adjunct professors are cheaper and often have more real-world experience, and that limiting how much they can teach hurts education and puts upward pressure on tuition costs.

The rule under challenge requires full-time faculty to teach “substantially all of the first one-third of each student’s coursework.” Woodward wrote that the limits “cannot be clearly explained by differences in real or perceived quality in the instruction of full-time or adjunct faculty” and that the ABA standard unfairly restricts the ability of adjunct professors to teach first-year law students. He added that the standard appears to restrict his own ability to teach first-year law students; according to his Justice Department biography, Woodward has been an adjunct law professor at Catholic University.

The letter gave the ABA 15 days to change the standard or explain why the rule does not violate federal antitrust law. If the association’s response is “insufficient,” the department “may proceed with additional investigatory steps necessary to address this apparent violation of federal antitrust law,” Woodward wrote. A spokeswoman for the ABA’s accreditation council said the group plans to respond to the Justice Department.

The ABA last month proposed eliminating its requirement that full-time faculty teach the first one-third of coursework. The proposed standard would still require full-time faculty to teach more than half of all credit hours offered by a law school, or two-thirds of what law schools call “student contact hours.” Woodward’s letter suggested the proposal remained problematic.

The missive adds to a Trump administration campaign against the country’s largest association of lawyers, which has drawn criticism from Republicans who argue the group favors liberal political positions and should not have so much power to set professional and educational standards. Woodward’s letter also cited the ABA’s positions on abortion rights, affirmative action and transgender healthcare as areas where the association was “out of step on contemporary legal issues.”

The ABA sued the Trump administration last year over actions it took against some elite law firms.

Other parts of the administration have separately targeted the ABA’s role in overseeing law schools. The Education Department has moved toward repealing its recognition of the ABA council’s role in accrediting law schools. Accreditation by the recognized body is a quality check required for law schools to gain access to federal student-loan funds.

Graduating from an ABA-accredited law school is required in many states to take the bar exam. Texas dropped the requirement earlier this year.