By Karen Sloan
Aug 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Education on Friday moved to strip the American Bar Association of its longstanding status as the federally recognized accreditor of U.S. law schools, deepening a clash between President Donald Trump's administration and the nation’s most high-profile lawyer organization.
Removing the ABA as the official overseer of law schools, a role it has filled since 1952, represents the administration’s latest effort to curtail the influence of the group,
which a White House spokesperson in 2025 dismissed as a “snooty” organization of “leftist lawyers.”
In a lengthy report released on Friday, Education Department staff concluded that the ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is not "separate and independent" from the larger ABA as required. The report also faulted the ABA for being too slow to revise its rule requiring law schools to meet diversity standards.
A review of the ABA’s accreditation rules found it “out of compliance with the agency’s accreditation regulations and recognition standards,” an Education Department spokesperson said on Friday.
Revoking the ABA's accreditor status would disrupt federal student loan access for some law schools and could make it harder for law students to take the bar exam and become licensed attorneys in different states.
A bipartisan accreditation advisory committee will consider Friday's recommendation in September, with a final decision several months away.
The ABA's accreditation council will “address any misconceptions and clarify the record” when it meets with the federal advisory committee next month, its chairperson, Melissa Hart, said in a statement. She said the council is “confident” it can address the Education Department’s concerns.
DEEPENING CLASH WITH ABA
Trump signed an executive order in April 2025 directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to assess whether to suspend or terminate the ABA as the government’s official law school accreditor, citing its “unlawful ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ requirements."
Since then, the ABA has sued the administration over canceled domestic violence grant funding and to challenge Trump's executive orders targeting individual law firms. The U.S. Department of Justice has barred its attorneys from speaking at or attending ABA events and curtailed the ABA’s longtime role in vetting judicial nominees.
The administration's move to end the organization's accreditor status comes despite recent efforts by the ABA’s law school wing to assert its independence from its parent organization and eliminate its DEI rule for law schools.
The ABA's policymaking body earlier this month voted against removing the DEI rule, but the legal education council was expected to push ahead with stripping the rule at a previously scheduled meeting on Friday.
(Reporting by Karen Sloan in Sacramento, California; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
