Texas Law School Deans Want State to Keep ABA Accreditation (1)

Deans of eight of Texas’ ten law schools are urging the state’s high court to move past its differences with the American Bar Association and continue to let it determine who can sit for the state bar exam.

Responding to a request for input about potentially ending that 42-year relationship, the deans told the Texas Supreme Court that opening the test to graduates of non-ABA accredited schools is “likely to reverse decades of progress in measuring the excellence of legal education.”

Ending the ABA requirement would also harm schools’ national reputations, reducing the availability of quality legal services in the state, the deans said in a June 28 letter, which Bloomberg Law obtained through a public records request.

The letter, arriving days before the end of a public comment period on July 1, presents a mostly united front about the difficulties law schools could face if the state ends the ABA tie and reclaims authority to determine who can sit for the exam.

Joining the letter were deans at University of Houston, Texas Southern University, Baylor University, University of North Texas, Southern Methodist University, Texas Tech, South Texas College of Law, and St. Mary’s School of Law.

Writing separately, University of Texas School of Law Dean Robert Chesney offered several options to end or reduce the ABA requirement. Among them: keep the ABA requirement but let non-accredited schools make their case for a waiver.

“I hope the court will give some version of it a shot,” Chesney wrote on June 30. “It seems the Texas thing to do.”

Only Texas A&M’s Robert B. Ahdieh didn’t submit a comment among the deans at Texas’ 10 law schools.

In a phone call Tuesday, Ahdieh said he supports revisiting Texas’ reliance on the ABA but that ending it altogether could impede graduates’ ability to practice in states that require accreditation to sit for the bar test. Plus, without an alternative accreditor in place, it’s unclear where Texas schools would turn without the ABA, he said.

“We as lawyers are supposed to be experts in the gray and not in black and white, and the odds the answer here is black and white are low,” Ahdieh said. “ABA has serious imperfections that we need to address but it’s also the case they provide the only framework for national accreditation for law school credentials that we currently have.”

The deans’ feedback could help inform the justices’ thinking as the court moves ahead this summer in discussing the ABA relationship now that their work from the 2024-25 term is complete.

In April, the court requested comments about ending or reducing reliance on the ABA and shifting authority back to the state. The announcement came without an explanation, though it was largely assumed and later confirmed by Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock that it flowed from the ABA taking political and ideological positions.

“It does not seem to be the kind of organization that all lawyers regardless of their viewpoint can be proud to be a part of,” Blacklock told Bloomberg Law during a wide-ranging interview on June 19.

That raises questions about whether the state court system should “outsource our government power to a private entity that’s going to take political and ideological positions,” he said.

The comment period came after the Trump administration threatened to end ABA law school accreditation due to DEI practices. Florida in March formed a committee to analyze alternatives to its ABA accreditation program, and the comments it received overwhelmingly recommended letting people with a JD from a non-accredited school sit for the bar test.

In Texas, the court received about 130 comments, split evenly in favor of keeping the ABA requirement and ending it.

The ABA’s council, which is responsible for accreditation, wants to maintain the relationship.

Vaguely addressing the court’s concerns about ABA’s political positions, chair David Brennen and managing director Jennifer Rosato Perea wrote in a June 30 letter that “the policies, statements, and resolutions of the general ABA are not representations of the council.”