The American Bar Association’s Day of Reckoning – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

In August 1992, the American Bar Association held its annual meeting in San Francisco. It was there that, by a vote of 276 to 168, the ABA’s policy-making House of Delegates endorsed pro-choice legislation that was pending before Congress. This was a radical reversal of the ABA’s previous position of neutrality regarding abortion.

Simultaneously, following a keynote speech by immediate past chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession presented an award to Professor Anita Hill in “special recognition” of her “key testimony” in the 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Hill had attempted to portray Thomas as a sexual predator unworthy of a seat on the Court.

In short, 1992 was the year when the ABA abandoned all pretense of being an apolitical professional organization and publicly emerged as a special-interest adjunct of the Democrat Party.

Up to that point, as a Philadelphia trial lawyer, I had been a dues-paying member of the ABA. But, when I learned of the progressive hijinks in San Francisco, I wrote a letter of protest to the editors of the ABA Journal as follows:

I was most interested to learn that we have adopted an official policy on abortion. So what’s our position on apartheid, gun control, concentration camps in Bosnia, homelessness, AIDS and ozone depletion? As with abortion, the public no doubt needs and awaits further moral instruction from us on these and other big issues that dwarf the grubby business of practicing law. By the way, must future nominees to the federal bench adhere to our ideological agenda in order to be deemed professionally qualified by us?

The editors elected not to publish my letter. But I did receive a call from a reporter who interviewed and subsequently quoted me in the ABA Journal as follows:

Who are we to tell anybody about abortion, or any other issue that isn’t directly a part of the practice of law? We can talk about the rules of procedure and substantive areas of the law, but the idea of the ABA taking an official position about a fundamental moral issue [such as abortion] – I just think we’ve strayed too far from our real purpose. Why do we think the public wants to hear from us?

Shortly thereafter, I joined thousands of other lawyers who quit the ABA in protest.

All of which prompted ABA President J. Michael McWilliams to minimize the scope of the problem with this dismissive observation: “Certainly we don’t want people to resign just because of one issue.”

As in “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

But let’s back up a bit.

Prior to the early 20th century, law schools were not the primary path to becoming a lawyer. Instead, aspiring lawyers would “read the law” under the guidance of preceptors such as practicing lawyers or judges in preparation for the bar examination. This was the way that, for example, Abraham Lincoln, Clarence Darrow, and Supreme Court Justices John Marshall and Robert Jackson became lawyers.

But, in 1893, the ABA formed its Section of Legal Education, which began promoting education in law schools as a better way to mint lawyers. And, in 1923, the ABA established national standards for legal education and began vetting law schools for adherence to those criteria.

Since then the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the one and only national accrediting body for law schools. As such, the ABA holds the power to effectively turn off the lights of any law school that does not meet with its approval. For, if a law school were to lose accreditation, its students would likely become ineligible for federal loans and Pell Grants and be denied permission to sit for the bar exam in most states.

Unsurprisingly, this singular and sweeping authority has become a useful tool for the leftists who run the ABA.

In 2021 the ABA promulgated a “core” accreditation requirement pursuant to which law schools must “demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion,” including by “commit[ting] to having a student body [and faculty] that is diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”

Consequently, a law school could lose accreditation if it failed to satisfy the ABA that it was providing “full opportunities” for “under represented groups” based on, among other things, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, and socioeconomic background.

But, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court held that race-based admissions programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Court ruled that such programs relied on racial stereotypes and discriminated against certain racial groups (such as Asian applicants) by penalizing them relative to others.

In 2025, following warnings by state attorneys general and the Trump administration, the ABA paused enforcement of its “core” diversity, equity, and inclusion standard as it considered ways to work around the Supreme Court’s holding in the Harvard case.

And so it was that, on April 23, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion as an accreditation standard for law schools. After noting that the ABA has suspended its DEI requirements “while it considers proposed revisions,” the order flatly states that “this standard and similar unlawful mandates must be permanently eradicated.” (Emphasis added)

The executive order instructs the U.S. attorney general and the secretary of education “to investigate and take appropriate action to terminate unlawful discrimination by American law schools that is advanced by the [ABA] Council, including unlawful ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ requirements under the guise of accreditation standards. The Secretary of Education shall also assess whether to suspend or terminate the [ABA] Council’s status as an accrediting agency under federal law.”

So now the leftist ideologues who preside over the ABA are faced with a bitter choice. They can either swallow their invidious and discriminatory DEI mandate or lose their monopoly on accrediting the nation’s law schools.

Either way, it will be a well-deserved and long-overdue reckoning for the ABA and yet another decisive win for President Trump and the American people.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor and civil and criminal trial lawyer.

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