For decades, the American Bar Association has required law schools to promote diversity and inclusion, but that may be changing soon. The ABA’s governing body recently voted to eliminate its diversity language after a year of pressure from the Trump administration and moves by conservative-led states to sideline the nation’s main professional organization for lawyers.
American Bar Association council votes to repeal diversity requirement
Reuters reported that the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which is in charge of accreditation for law schools, voted Friday to remove from its standards a statement requiring law schools to pursue diversity. The clause, known as Standard 206, says that:
“Consistent with sound legal education policy and the Standards, a law school shall demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing full opportunities for the study of law and entry into the profession by members of underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, and a commitment to having a student body that is diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”
The standard also requires that accredited law schools “demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by having a faculty and staff that are diverse with respect to gender, race and ethnicity.”
Pressure from Trump administration, Republican state governments
These proposed changes to the ABA’s standards come in direct response to pressure from the Trump administration and Republican state governments. The ABA suspended Standard 206 in February 2025, shortly after Trump returned to the White House and launched an anti-DEI campaign.
In March 2025, then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo to law school deans stating that Standard 206 “requires blatantly illegal discrimination” and declaring that, in light of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, “If diversity is defined in terms of race and sex outcomes, then universities cannot lawfully pursue diversity by any means.”
President Trump followed this with an April 2025 executive order threatening to suspend or revoke the accreditation powers of the ABA and other professional organizations that did not permanently eliminate their diversity requirements. Alabama, Florida and Texas have already removed requirements that lawyers in those states receive ABA accreditation, with other conservative-led states pursuing similar changes.
Additional anti-diversity changes may be coming to the ABA
The vote by the ABA council has not finalized the rule change; the ABA House of Delegates is scheduled to begin debating the change in August, and a final decision may not be issued until 2027.
It appears, however, that the ABA is determined to change its diversity requirements under conservative political pressure despite significant outcry from law students, professors, deans and lawyers who have urged the organization to maintain or even strengthen the ABA’s diversity commitments.
Despite the urging of the ABA rank and file, a memo from the ABA council distributed earlier in May recommended the repeal of its diversity standards “because the U.S. Department of Education and a number of states have interpreted the law to reach the conclusion that this Standard cannot be enforced as a minimum standard for accreditation.”
The memo warned that the “national system of accreditation — and the Council’s role as an accreditor — would be imminently threatened if Standard 206 is not repealed.”
Beyond recommending that Standard 206 be repealed, the ABA council is also looking into revising a nondiscrimination section of its standards, as well as eliminating a 2022 requirement for anti-bias training for law students.
In short, it appears that the Trump administration and Republican state governments are winning their fight against one of the country’s most important professional organizations over the issue of diversity. As the administration also targets other professions such as medicine, the White House and its Republican state allies are getting their way in pushing the field of law in the United States to be less diverse.