Dive Snapshot:
- The Trump administration is ramping up its attacks on the American Bar Association by threatening the body’s higher education accreditation arm.
- On Friday, U.S. Department of Education staff released a report recommending the agency deny federal recognition of the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits law schools. Staff said the body did not meet more than two dozen criteria required for recognition.
- That report — as well as a separate, roughly 500-page report obtained by The Wall Street Journal last week — argues that the accrediting council is not independent enough from the ABA’s professional organization.
The impact: The ABA’s accrediting council accredits nearly 200 law schools, though it only acts as a gatekeeper of federal student aid for just over a dozen freestanding institutions of legal education that aren’t affiliated with larger colleges or universities.
A spokesperson for the accrediting council said Monday in an emailed statement, “The Council is confident it complies with the Higher Education Act and with the Department’s requirements for accreditors.”
The ABA is in the process of seeking renewal of its federal recognition as an accreditor. The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, an independent federal panel that also provides recommendations on accreditor recognition, is set to review the ABA’s application at a Sept. 23 meeting. At the NACIQI meeting, Education Department officials can present their case against recognizing the ABA’s accrediting arm.
Education Department officials will make the final call on recognition and do not have to follow NACIQI’s recommendations.
“We look forward to the opportunity to address any misconceptions and clarify the record at our upcoming hearing before the NACIQI committee next month,” the ABA accrediting council spokesperson said.
In comments to The Wall Street Journal, Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education David Barker alluded in part to ideological reasons behind the department’s move to remove the ABA’s recognition.
“When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do,” Barker said.
The context: The ABA has come under fire from the administration since the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In an April 2025 executive order calling for an overhaul of higher education accreditation, Trump took aim at the ABA’s accrediting council over its criteria around fostering diversity in legal education. In February 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice also targeted the ABA over the standard, which had by then already frozen the criteria and begun reviewing it for compliance with federal guidance and Trump’s earlier executive orders.
On Friday, the same day as the Education Department’s report, the ABA’s accrediting council voted to strip down or eliminate multiple diversity rules.
What we’re watching: While ABA’s accreditation recognition may only directly affect a relatively small subset of institutions, the Education Department’s move could have much wider implications.
The administration is seeking to remake the accreditation world, including by giving quality assurance bodies new roles. Among them is mandating and overseeing intellectual diversity policies at campuses.
The administration has also tried to enlist accreditors in its fights against specific institutions, including Harvard University. In that case, Trump officials alerted Harvard’s accreditor about possible accreditation violations in July 2025. The ABA could be a test for whether the administration can effectively use recognition as a weapon to bring accreditors in line with its wishes.
