The Trump administration on Friday took its first concrete step toward breaking the American Bar Association’s long-standing monopoly on law school accreditation, a move that could fundamentally reshape how legal education is regulated in the United States.
Department of Education staff formally recommended that the ABA lose its status as the only officially recognized accreditor of American law schools, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the recommendation. The recommendation now moves to the department’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), followed by a review from Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent.
Education Department officials framed the action as a challenge to what they describe as a “cartel” in accreditation that allows politically motivated organizations to impose their ideologies on educational institutions.
“We have said many times that accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel,” Assistant Secretary of Education David Barker said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”
The ABA was already scheduled for a hearing before NACIQI in September, and many observers had viewed that hearing as a possible avenue to block the renewal of its accrediting authority. An official familiar with the matter told The Federalist that part of the September meeting is meant to resolve some mostly unrelated issues raised during a prior renewal hearing. Friday’s action, however, represents a separate and more aggressive line of attack.
The Department of Education reportedly prepared a nearly 500-page report detailing why the ABA is unfit to hold such sweeping authority over law schools. The report argues the association does not maintain sufficient independence from the legal profession to serve as a trustworthy accreditor of educational offerings, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The ABA has long been criticized by conservative and legal reform groups for using its accreditation power to push left-wing policies onto law schools. Critics point to requirements related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming, affirmative action hiring, and other ideological mandates that schools had to adopt to maintain their accreditation status.
“The American Bar Association has abused its role as the nation’s main law school accreditor to push leftist ideology in the legal profession,” Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said on social media. “The ABA lost its credibility long ago. Now it will finally face the repercussions of prioritizing political agendas over the law.”
While the ABA has claimed it has stopped some of its more overtly discriminatory requirements, such as affirmative action hiring or DEI programming for law school students, groups like Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) argue those changes are merely temporary strategies designed to wait out the current administration.
The move against the ABA is part of a broader Trump administration effort to target accreditors across higher education. Earlier this week, the Department of Education published a proposed rule that would make it easier to recognize new accreditors across various fields, a step designed to increase competition and reduce the influence of established accrediting bodies. Trump has called accreditation a “secret weapon” to rein in what he describes as far-left institutional capture of higher education.
The practical implications of stripping the ABA’s accrediting status are significant, though some nuances remain. According to an official familiar with the matter, if the ABA loses its accreditation role, a university’s law school could still be accredited under the umbrella of the full university’s accreditation, provided the law school is affiliated with a larger institution. Standalone law schools that are not linked to a university, however, would face a more precarious situation, as they rely on accreditation to remain eligible for federal student loans.
For law schools that depend on federal financial aid for their students, the loss of ABA accreditation could be devastating unless alternative accrediting bodies emerge quickly. The proposed rule on new accreditors is seen as a way to facilitate that transition.
The ABA has not yet publicly responded in detail to the recommendation, but the organization has previously defended its accreditation standards as necessary for ensuring quality and fairness in legal education.
Conservative legal advocacy groups have been pressing for action against the ABA for years. As The Federalist has reported, movement against the ABA from outside groups has been mounting, and the Trump administration has specifically targeted the organization because of its political activism. The Friday recommendation is the most direct official action yet.
Critics of the ABA argue that its accreditation process has effectively forced law schools to adopt ideological policies that are unrelated to the quality of legal training. They contend that the ABA’s authority, combined with the financial consequences of losing accreditation, gives it outsized power to shape the legal profession’s culture and politics.
Supporters of the ABA, on the other hand, view its accreditation role as a safeguard against diploma mills and substandard legal education. They argue that the organization’s standards help ensure that law schools produce competent lawyers who are prepared for the profession.
The path forward is not immediate. The recommendation must still pass through the NACIQI review process and a final decision by Undersecretary Kent. The September hearing provides a potential venue for both sides to present their cases. The outcome could set a precedent for how the Education Department handles accreditors across all fields of study.
If the ABA is stripped of its monopoly status, it would open the door for other accrediting bodies to compete for law school recognition, potentially breaking the organizational hold that the ABA has maintained for decades. That competition, in theory, would force accreditors to focus on educational quality rather than political agendas.
For now, the announcement marks the first formal step in what is likely to be a contentious process, with both sides gearing up for a fight over the future of legal education accreditation.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/21/trump-admin-starts-breaking-american-bar-associations-left-wing-monopoly-on-law-school-accreditation/