The American Bar Association — the outfit that decides which law schools get to exist in this country — just voted to repeal its DEI mandates. Not because they had a moral awakening. Not because they suddenly realized forcing racial quotas on admissions is unconstitutional. No, the ABA's own internal memo admitted that failure to repeal would "imminently" threaten the organization's accreditation monopoly. They didn't see the light. They saw the ledger.
Profile in courage, folks.
The ABA Accreditation Council approved the elimination of Standard 206, the rule that required law schools to "demonstrate by concrete action" their commitment to diversity "by gender, race, and ethnicity" — and here's the kicker — regardless of constitutional or statutory prohibitions. Read that again. The ABA was telling law schools they had to pursue race-based policies even if the law said they couldn't. The Supreme Court ruled against racial preferences in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in 2023, and these people just kept right on trucking, as reported by Just The News.
But then the consequences showed up.
Texas became the first state to sever ties with the ABA back in January 2026. Florida followed. Tennessee and Ohio started reviewing the ABA's monopoly over accreditation. The Department of Justice threatened to stop state bars from requiring lawyers to attend ABA-accredited schools. And then Attorney General Pam Bondi personally warned the ABA that its federal accreditation monopoly was on the chopping block.
Suddenly, "diversity is our strength" became "we'd like to keep our jobs, please."
The Council also proposed repealing Standard 303(c), which mandated "bias and racism" education requirements, and revising Standards 205 and 207 covering nondiscrimination and disabilities. The whole DEI apparatus is getting gutted — on paper, anyway.
I say "on paper" because Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President of Defending Ed, isn't exactly popping champagne. Her response? "Approval may take until 2027 — so I'll believe it when I see it." Smart woman. The ABA's House of Delegates still has to debate the changes at the August 2026 annual meeting, and a separate hearing on the ABA's recognition request is scheduled for September 2026. That's a lot of runway for the DEI bureaucrats to organize a counterattack.
And they'll need it, because the numbers are damning. A Defending Ed investigation found that 62 of nearly 200 law schools still require DEI-related coursework. Another 72 law schools maintain DEI offices or — and this is my favorite part — "rebranded versions" of DEI offices. You know, the ones where they changed the name from "Diversity and Inclusion" to "Belonging and Community" and hoped nobody would notice.
During the ABA's 45-day public feedback window, only 2 of 50 comments supported eliminating Standard 206. The Critical Legal Collective — a scholar-activist group, because of course that's a thing — is leading the opposition. Meanwhile, Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent required two accreditors to submit monitoring reports proving they've actually eliminated DEI requirements, not just renamed them.
The ABA Council released a statement saying, "The Council has been clear that it will not require accredited schools to choose between compliance with accreditation and legal standards." Translation: we got caught forcing schools to break the law, and we'd prefer not to lose our monopoly over it.
This is how the DEI house of cards collapses. Not with a philosophical epiphany. Not with some grand cultural shift. It falls because the people propping it up finally realize they're standing in front of a freight train. The ABA didn't change its mind — it changed its math.
Cowards folding under pressure is still a win. We'll take it.
