The American Bar Association's decades-long monopoly over law school accreditation now faces a Trump administration decision after a federal panel deadlocked on stripping its gatekeeper status.
Fox News Digital reported that the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity split 8-8 on whether to strip the ABA of its sole federal recognition as the accreditor of U.S. law schools.
That deadlock leaves the call with Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent. He has up to 90 days to decide whether the ABA keeps the power that has shaped nearly every American law school for more than 70 years.
Education Department staff had already recommended ending the ABA's gatekeeper role. They found the group out of compliance with more than 26 federal recognition criteria.
For generations, ABA accreditation has been the ticket. In almost every state, graduates need a degree from an ABA-accredited school to sit for the bar. Federal Title IV student aid also runs through that same recognition.
Roughly 200 law schools live under the system. If recognition ends, university-affiliated schools could turn to their institutional accreditors. About a dozen stand-alone law schools would have to scramble for a new path.
NACIQI Chairman Jay Greene told reporters the core problem cut across the entire committee.
"The primary issue that troubled all members of NACIQI is that the ABA accrediting body is clearly not separate and independent from the ABA as a whole," Greene said.
"Everyone on the committee agreed that this was a problem that required changes. The main divide was over whether the ABA was willing and able to take those steps to remedy the problem or not."
Federal rules require institutional accreditors to operate independently of the trade associations they serve. Critics say the ABA's structure never met that test cleanly.
Reuters reported the 18-member advisory committee deadlocked after a full day of debate and failed to issue a recommendation, advancing the question to Kent, a Trump appointee. The standoff follows a Trump executive order directing an assessment of suspending or terminating the ABA as law-school accreditor over DEI requirements.
ABA Accreditation Council chair Melissa Hart defended the group's record.
"The Council has been continuously recognized by the Department of Education since 1952, being found in compliance during every regular recognition cycle for the past 74 years."
"We take accreditation and our recognition as an accreditor very seriously, and we continue to be a reliable authority for accrediting J.D. programs," Hart said.
While the federal decision sits with Kent, state supreme courts have started rewriting the rules on their own.
In January, the Texas Supreme Court became the first to eliminate reliance on the ABA for law-school accreditation. It finalized a rule taking over the approval process and said schools would be judged on "simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria."
Florida's Supreme Court followed nine days later. In May, Ohio's high court formally proposed amendments for a state-run accreditation process. Supreme courts in Tennessee, Alabama, and Washington have also taken steps to bypass the ABA monopoly.
That state-level shift fits a wider pattern of Trump-era agencies rewriting long-settled rules, much as the Education Department scrapped a decades-old disparate impact rule used in school discrimination probes.
Trump's Justice Department weighed in earlier this year. It argued the ABA's "cartel-like control over law school accreditation drives up costs, limits access, and pushes ridiculous ideological mandates over merit." On Tennessee, DOJ said ending exclusive reliance "will expand opportunity AND lower costs."
Reed Rubinstein, senior vice president of America First Legal and a former Education Department general counsel, told Fox News Digital the ABA has "disqualified itself and undermined public faith and trust in the legal profession."
The ABA recently moved to repeal its DEI accreditation standard. Rubinstein called that move a "ruse to retain power."
"The DEI accreditation standard, from the moment it was adopted, conflicted with controlling Supreme Court rulings and the plain text of the Civil Rights Act."
"The ABA's leadership has made it clear, publicly and otherwise, that it will return to its unlawful ideological agenda at its first opportunity," he said.
Rubinstein urged the administration to strip the ABA's federal status for good. He argued state supreme courts already certify and discipline lawyers, so "there is arguably no need for a middleman."
"By returning actual authority over legal education directly to the courts themselves... the result should be a better-quality education for attorneys and more accountability and transparency for the public," Rubinstein said.
Those accountability fights echo other Trump administration moves to reset federal priorities, including when Trump signed an executive order cutting the CDC childhood vaccine schedule and when the administration pulled 28,000 trucker licenses from non-citizens while tapping veterans for the seats.
Kent now holds the lever. Keep the ABA's recognition, and the national monopoly continues. Strip it, and the gatekeeping model that has governed legal education since the early 1950s breaks open.
University law schools could rely on broader institutional accreditors. Stand-alone schools would need new homes. State high courts already rewriting bar admission rules would face less federal friction.
Federal courts have slowed other Trump administration policy shifts, as when a federal judge paused a teen pregnancy grant overhaul while leaving terminated funding in place. The accreditation fight runs through the Education Department's own process instead.
The ABA remains the only federally recognized law-school accreditor after more than 70 years. Department staff documented more than two dozen compliance failures. A divided federal advisory panel could not agree on the remedy. The next move belongs to the Trump administration.
Taxpayers fund the student aid. States license the lawyers. A single professional association should not own the gate when the rules and the ideology stop matching the law.
