The vote itself was hardly exciting at all. Standard 206, the diversity, equity, and inclusion requirement that had controlled how the nation’s more than 200 accredited law schools recruited students and faculty, was finally repealed by the council that oversees law school accreditation after a year of suspension, drafts, and quiet hallway discussions within the American Bar Association. There was neither a big announcement nor a press conference broadcast on television. Just a procedural ruling that, depending on who you ask, either quietly removes one of the last institutional safeguards of a profession that has spent decades insisting it cares about who gets to practice law or fixes a long-overdue error.
It’s difficult to ignore the timing. In response to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on racial admissions, as well as growing political and legal pressure from state attorneys general and conservative legal organizations, the ABA had already suspended the rule months earlier. There was a pause in the suspension. This seems to be a verdict.
The Center Square was informed by Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education, that the action “could be seen as a significant policy reversal, but only if the ABA makes good on its promise to kill the law school ‘diversity commitment’ standard for good.” That sentence’s skepticism conveys a lot. Even those who applaud the ruling are unsure that the ABA has completely reversed the ideology that underpins the rule, which detractors claim “narrows discourse” and “corrodes discussion” in classrooms that are already notorious for their cautious self-censorship.
In the last ten years, Standard 206 has left its mark on practically every law school orientation. The statements about diversity were posted on bulletin boards. the required introductions. The hiring committees for faculty members are required to record their outreach. Lawyers have been debating whether or not those initiatives truly altered the composition of the legal profession for years, frequently over the same lukewarm coffee at the same bar association mixers. Despite decades of declared commitment, the proportion of Black and Hispanic lawyers remains remarkably low. The question now is whether the rule’s removal will hasten a regress or if it just makes clear what has always been true: paper standards seldom cause stubborn numbers to change.
Speaking with those in the legal education field gives the impression that Standard 206 is no longer the main focus. It’s about what takes its place. Unaffected by ABA regulations, some deans are already creating their own internal diversity frameworks that are influenced by U.S. News rankings, alumni donors, and accreditors in their home states. Quietly, others are relieved. For almost two years, a few schools—particularly those in states where DEI offices were outright prohibited—were in an awkward compliance limbo, with their state legislatures telling them to dismantle one thing and their accreditor telling them to maintain another.
In their public writings, members of the ABA’s Standing Committees on Women and the Law and Minority and Women Participation have argued for diversity in a way that doesn’t sound bureaucratic. One participant said they were “dazzled by the different cultures, characters, and skin colors” they came across on a daily basis. Another wrote about witnessing mostly Hispanic students from Benito Juarez High School compete in a citywide mock trial program at Chicago’s Daley Center. Over the course of an afternoon, the students transformed from shy teenagers into calm advocates. A procedural vote does not make stories like that go away. However, the institutional framework that supported and formalized them simply became less robust.
Due in part to client demands, investors in legal education, including the megafirms that hire from these institutions, appear to think that diversity initiatives will continue in some capacity. Before assigning work, corporate counsel offices continue to distribute diversity questionnaires. The pressure from the market is not going away.
Whether the ABA’s retreat represents an open admission that the previous framework was ineffective or the start of something more subdued and long-lasting remains to be seen. Soon enough, the profession will speak for itself. It always does.
