The American Bar Association is allegedly pushing racial quotas on law schools, according to this Wash Post story:
The Education Department’s general counsel is challenging the American Bar Association’s new standard on diversity in enrollment and hiring, which calls for the law schools it accredits to take “concrete action” to attract more minority students, faculty and staff.
The 400,000-member law association, which has accredited nearly 200 law schools nationwide, said it updated its standards last year after a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that said law schools could use race and ethnicity as factors in admissions with certain restrictions.
The new standard gives no specific benchmarks, but the association said it would judge results on “the totality of the law school’s actions.”
Some Education Department officials said the ABA’s new standard effectively promotes quotas and could force schools in states that ban affirmative action to break the law. Some civil rights organizations said the new standards did not go far enough “to stem the decline” in minority enrollments in law schools.