The ABA Is a Joke. So Why Is It Still Accrediting Law Schools?

By Sarah Parshall Perry

Monday, April 27, 2026

 

The American Bar Association’s monopoly over the accreditation of U.S. law schools has long been defended as essential to maintaining excellence in the legal profession. As the sole federally recognized accreditor whose approval is required for bar eligibility in nearly every state in the country, the ABA exercises monolithic influence over legal education and, by extension, the judiciary and the bar. But this authority rests on an implicit premise of institutional neutrality, a premise that no longer holds — if it ever did at all.

 

In our work to secure a high-quality, value-neutral education for every American student from preschool through graduate school, Defending Education has recently released a report identifying the myriad ways that the American Bar Association is unfit to continue in its role of overseeing American legal education.

 

What are they, you ask? Let us count them.

 

For starters, the ABA doesn’t represent a majority — or even a plurality — of American lawyers. In fact, its membership represents a paltry 11–12 percent of actively practicing lawyers. As of last count, the ABA itself notes that as of January 2024, while there are 1,322,649 active lawyers in the U.S., only about 150,000 are active ABA members. That kind of skeletal representation could be a function of the ABA’s having taken positions on a multitude of legal issues that reveal a consistently leftward tilt. For example, America First Legal recently noted that over the past decade, at least 80 percent of the ABA’s Supreme Court amicus briefs advanced progressive outcomes, with none supporting conservative legal positions. The ABA has, for example, consistently argued for the losing perspective on abortion, gender identity, gun control, and affirmative action. It has even gone so far as to argue that the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified — a position so untenable that even the Department of Justice and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg laughed it off.

 

That doesn’t just make the American Bar Association a progressive advocacy organization masquerading as a neutral membership organization; it makes them bad lawyers.

 

The ABA’s ratings of federal judicial nominees have also long exhibited demonstrable inconsistency when applied to conservative candidates. Empirical studies spanning multiple administrations, including analyses published in Political Research Quarterly, document a pattern: Republican nominees receive lower ratings than Democratic nominees with comparable credentials. During both the first and second Trump administrations, for example, numerous well-qualified conservative nominees received “not qualified” ratings, indicating that rather than relying on objective peer assessments to determine judicial fitness, the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary is instead applying de facto ideological filters.

 

Then there are the ABA’s skewed legal-education mandates. Its standard 303(c) requires every accredited law school to provide all students with education on “bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism” at the beginning of their studies and again before graduation. Framed as professional development, this requirement effectively compels “racial sensitivity” training as a condition of accreditation — something that has absolutely no bearing on the suitability of a law student to practice law. And for years, ABA Standard 206 required “concrete action” to promote diversity in student bodies, faculties, and staff with respect to race, ethnicity, and gender — a regulation that imposed race- and sex-based quotas in violation of federal civil rights and constitutional law. Even after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) rendered such practices constitutionally suspect, the ABA maintained these standards until political and legal pressure forced a temporary suspension until August 2026.

 

But a suspension is not a revocation, and a revocation is what’s needed.

 

Lastly, the ABA’s House of Delegates has repeatedly endorsed resolutions advancing specific positions on divisive cultural issues, from abortion to gender identity to racial equity and beyond. Whatever one’s views on these subjects, they are matters of legitimate democratic disagreement, and by adopting progressive opinions as official policy, the ABA has transformed from professional association to political agitprop, using its accreditation leverage to shape the next generation of lawyers in its image.

 

Because most states condition bar admission on graduation from an ABA-accredited school, and because federal student aid flows to those institutions, the ABA effectively controls a law student’s prospects of being professionally licensed. That control undermines public confidence in the independence of the judiciary and the bar. Texas and Florida have already divested the ABA of its accreditation status for their state bar’s eligibility. But when the ABA’s accreditation approval is up for review this summer, the Department of Education should go further and defenestrate the association, unblocking its federal chokehold on legal education and the practice of law.

 

The legal profession thrives when it remains committed to rigorous analysis and fidelity to the rule of law, not to a political agenda. Restoring law school neutrality requires ending the ABA’s accreditation monopoly.

 

The profession, the academy, and the public deserve better.