Amid mounting pressure from conservatives on the national lawyer group, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the state should “end its reliance on the American Bar Association” as the sole accreditor of law schools.
In most cases, Florida requires people to graduate from accredited law schools to be eligible to take the bar exam to practice law. The American Bar Association has served as the state’s lone accreditor for more than three decades.
But the ABA’s accreditation process has come under fire from conservative officials including Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who accuse the organization of trying to require diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at law schools — a political hot-button issue.
The court’s 5-1 decision Thursday followed a report issued in October by a workgroup appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz. The panel offered a dozen recommendations for moving away from what it called the ABA’s “near monopoly” on accrediting law schools.
The court “is persuaded that it is not in Floridians’ best interest for the ABA to be the sole gatekeeper deciding which law schools’ graduates are eligible to sit for the state’s General Bar Examination and become licensed attorneys in Florida,” Muñiz and Justices John Couriel, Jamie Grosshans, Renee Francis, and Meredith Sasso said in Thursday’s ruling. Justice Jorge Labarga issued a dissenting opinion.
The rule changes “create the opportunity for additional entities to carry out an accrediting and gatekeeping function on behalf of the (Supreme) Court,” the majority decision said.
Thursday’s decision drew immediate applause from DeSantis, Uthmeier and other conservatives.
“The (highly partisan) ABA should not be a gatekeeper for legal education or the legal profession,” DeSantis said in a post on the social-media platform X.
Thursday’s ruling “is a good start,” Uthmeier posted on X.
“The ABA is a captured, far-left organization and should not dictate the ability of Florida students to sit for the Bar (exam),” Uthmeier said.
In a July 30 letter to members of the state panel, Uthmeier called the ABA “a brazenly political operation that seeks to impose its woke ideology on aspiring lawyers” and urged the court to unlink from the group.
“If the ABA ever existed as an important non-partisan organization that could be entrusted to ensure technical excellence in American legal education, those days have sadly long since passed,” Uthmeier wrote.
The court’s decision is the first step in Florida’s move away from the ABA as the sole accreditation agency.
The decision expands law-school accrediting agencies to include a “programmatic accrediting agency” recognized by the U.S. Department of Education “to accredit programs in legal education that lead to the first professional degree in law.” Also allowed would be an “institutional accrediting agency” recognized by the federal education department to accredit higher-education institutions, if the Florida Supreme Court also approves the agency.
The ABA currently is the sole programmatic accreditor approved by the federal education department, according to the decision.
The law-school accreditation issue has come amid other efforts targeting longstanding accreditation processes for Florida universities. State higher-education officials last summer approved forming an accreditation body with five other states as an alternative to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a longtime accrediting agency that has clashed with Florida education leaders.
In his dissent Thursday, Labarga pointed to the ABA’s decades-long history of accrediting law schools — a process he said culminated in over 115,000 applicants being admitted to The Florida Bar. The state bar association is the third largest in the nation, Labarga wrote, calling the majority opinion regrettable.
The ABA “has developed incomparable expertise in the accreditation process” and “has cultivated unmatched proficiency in dealing with Florida law-school-specific issues that would require decades for any successor to develop,” Labarga argued.
“As is the case with any large entity engaged in providing service to the public, refinements can always be made. However, replacing an established entity with an unknown alternative is detrimental in the context of disputes,” he concluded.
Jenn Rosato Perea, managing director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, said in an email the court’s order “reinforces the authority that it has always had” over licensure of law-school graduates and the law schools it recognizes as accredited. Perea works to support the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
The council “has dedicated itself to quality legal education for over 100 years” and “will continue to improve its standards and promote the benefits of a national accreditation system for students, employers, law schools and the states themselves,” Perea added.
Thursday’s decision came a day after DeSantis railed against the ABA during an appearance in Seminole, where he named Adam Tanenbaum to a seat on the Florida Supreme Court. Tanenbaum, who was appointed by DeSantis to the 1st District Court of Appeal in 2019, is the sixth currently serving justice of the seven-member court tapped by DeSantis.
DeSantis pointed to action taken by the Texas Supreme Court this month making Texas the first state to end ABA oversight of law schools.
Bondi in February threatened to strip the ABA’s status as federal government’s designated law-school accreditor and called for the association to scrap its law-school diversity and inclusion standards.
As criticism has intensified, the ABA in November announced it was undertaking a “core principles review” that will include an assessment of its standards for law schools.
The review “will focus on identifying any standards or rules that need to be changed to better align with our core principles and values,” David Thies, chairman of the ABA’s Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, wrote in a Nov. 24 announcement.
The review also is aimed at ensuring “that our existing standards do not unnecessarily impose burdens or cost, but rather allow sufficient flexibility to allow law schools to appropriately innovate, while still ensuring a baseline of quality,” Thies said.
–Dara Kam, News Service of Florida
Deborah Coffey says
Just more of Florida going to hell in a Fascist hand basket. Pretty soon, there will be nothing left of what DeSantis loves to call “the free state of Florida.” We will all be imprisoned by a bunch of nut bags that are starving for money, power, and complete control over every person that isn’t like them.
Laurel says
“But the ABA’s accreditation process has come under fire from conservative officials including Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who accuse the organization of trying to require diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at law schools — a political hot-button issue.”
DeSantis, Uthmeier and Bondi, the epitome of white competence. Bondi, in my opinion, who should be disbarred and removed from office, doesn’t realize that women are next for exclusion.
What continues to fascinate me is the word “woke” originally meant to be awake, to be aware. A statement by African American heritage people to be careful. The far right extremists have taken a word and twisted it into a whole new definition, that had nothing to do with its original intent, and made it bad. Now, “woke” means we don’t want black, brown, female, gay or any people who aren’t white, male and straight, in positions of any kind of power, whether political or simply personal. Absolutely nothing to do with being aware.
Same with BLM. Now, BLM has been redefined to be some sort of domestic terrorist group, instead of its original intent, which was people standing up for Black Lives Matter. Black lives do not matter to the extremist right.
I wish the Republican Party was more serious with matters that effect us all, you know, We the People, instead of trying to place the white male back at the apex again, some being competent, and some not so much. I have worked in the past with many who were seriously incompetent, and they moved ahead anyway. That’s the dream of the current administration. That’s the real reason DEI is a threat to them.
How about evolving instead of devolving? Require more of people.
Marek says
Republican party doesn’t exist anymore. It became a Donald Trump’s cult .
Sherry says
I’m guessing Maga Florida would much prefer “donnie” anoint all the lawyers as well as the judges. To hell with such things as passing the bar exam and “ethics”. . . kissing trump’s ring and pledging loyalty to the Maga cult is all that is required!