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Legal scholars had questioned the legality of the idea

Law schools will not have to impose mandatory racial quotas on enrollment to stay accredited by the American Bar Association.

ABA delegates failed to pass a requirement that law schools implement a racial quota system, even after rounds of edits.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The proposal, first released in May 2021, would have required law schools to submit annual progress reports on minority enrollment to the American Bar Association. Law schools that failed to boost the enrollment of “underrepresented groups” would have been at risk of losing their accreditation.

The proposal underwent three rounds of revisions before finally being withdrawn by the association’s house of delegates, which did not rule out revisiting the proposal at a later date. An early draft had warned that U.S. anti-discrimination laws were “not a justification” for “non-compliance” with the diversity standard, a line that drew criticism from many in the legal community, including from elite universities

NEW: The American Bar Association has axed a proposal to require law schools to “diversify” their student bodies, after more than a year of warnings from law professors that the plan would force schools to violate federal law.

Resistance is possible.https://t.co/bLLb5l5dKD

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) August 10, 2022

The edited resolution can be read here.

“Ten Yale Law School professors said in a public comment filed in June 2021 that the proposal ‘instructs schools to risk violating state or federal law in order to retain certification,’” the Free Beacon reported.

“The curricular mandate was nonetheless popular among law school administrators, with 150 deans calling on the American Bar Association to implement it,” the Free Beacon reported. “There has been much less administrative agitation for rules about minority enrollment, which law schools have long struggled to boost.”

MORE: ABA rejects higher standards for law schools because they’d hurt minorities

SOURCE: Emory Law School/YouTube

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