DEI has destroyed the American Bar Association
The ABA was more than willing to bully schools who didn’t accept affirmative action measures wholeheartedly...
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Radical DEI initiatives have been hollowing out some of America’s most powerful and influential institutions for years. The American Bar Association has become a victim of diversity, equity, and inclusion standards that have severely impacted their judicial ethics.
The Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Task Force is a new House Oversight group committed to cracking down on DEI, welfare abuse, and free speech issues. In one of their first hearings last week, Chairman Brandon Gill stated that “The ABA—an organization made up of attorneys who should know better—persisted in promoting DEI practices even though race-based admissions, forced speech, and considering race in employment decisions clearly violate the law.”
The American Bar association plays a key role in the U.S. justice system as the only accreditor of American law schools. This means that it has the sole power to influence the entire U.S. legal system, from determining education requirements to evaluating judicial nominees. Their radicalization has severe, dangerous consequences for the integrity of the law.
Between 2017-2018, the ABA began implementing Standard 206, which required law schools to enact concrete plans to “commit to diversity,” and to provide entry “into the profession by members of underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities.” In the 2023 cases Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions processes were a violation of federal law. In defiance of SCOTUS, the ABA sought to find workarounds. Rep. Gill stated that the ABA believed “illegality is … not a justification for a school’s noncompliance with Standard 206.”
Additionally, the ABA pushed Standard 303(C), which required law schools to teach courses on “bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism.” The purpose of the courses were allegedly to “eliminate racism in the legal profession.” In compliance, the University of Buffalo taught courses that emphasized figures like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Students were required to read articles like “Securitizing Gender in the War on Terror and Crime” and watch videos titled “What is systemic racism?” and “How to Be a Good Ally- Identity, Privilege, Resistance.” The course concluded with a “call to action,” that vaguely alludes to racial activism.
Despite federal pressure, the ABA has not backed down on its DEI initiatives. In February 2026, ABA President Michelle Behnke claimed that organization would “not abandon our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Their website has a major section devoted to diversity, including an award for “Excellence in Pipeline Diversity.” The Award specifically intends to “increase diversity in the legal profession.”
In a written testimony, Zack Smith, a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation claimed that the ABA is a “partisan program full of radical policies.” Smith pointed out that the ABA has a long history of punishing law schools who refused to comply with a race-based admissions process. The ABA repeatedly threatened to pull accreditation from George Mason University Law School for not implementing racial quotas.
In September 2025, the ABA once again tried to pull accreditation, this time from St. Thomas University for not meeting racial requirements. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier stated that “The ABA may dislike Christian values, but it can’t withhold accreditation to coerce schools to adopt its repugnant policies.” This further proved that the ABA was more than willing to bully schools who didn’t accept affirmative action measures.
A former student at Penn Law testified that the school operated as a “closed ideological loop; one that mandates conformity to Critical Race Theory (CRT), coerces student speech, and actively censors dissenting viewpoints.” In detailing his experiences, he spoke about how professors prioritized critical race theorists and presented “radical critiques of law enforcement and the American justice system.” In an assignment, he was forced to write an essay on systemic racism, and the grading rubric was influenced by how well students accepted the course’s racial justice framing.
The ABA being politically compromised is alarming and consequential. It is the gatekeeper to those intending to learn and wield American law - a practice that begets sustained societal outcomes that affect our country greatly and often permanently.
 | A guest post by
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Why stop at the ABA, when it was the progressive-controlled world of academia that poisoned all that issued from these infested institutions. DEI is just a symptom of the disease within progressive society. The fish rots from the head, and academia is the head of all the dysfunction within our nation.
There's one reason all these “judges “ let all the criminals run around free…