Trump Admin Starts Breaking American Bar Association’s Left-Wing Monopoly On Law School Accreditation
- August 22, 2026
Brendan Thies, The Federalist
The Trump administration announced Friday it is moving forward with dismantling the American Bar Association’s (ABA) stranglehold on U.S. law schools, which allowed the organization to force left-wing ideologies on legal education at the threat of revoking accreditation.
Department of Education staff recommended that the ABA lose its status as the only officially recognized accreditor of American law schools, starting a process that will send the recommendation to the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), and then to Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent for review.
As The Federalist reported, movement against the ABA from outside groups has been mounting, and the Trump administration has likewise targeted university accreditors generally, and specifically the ABA, because of its political activism. Earlier this week, the Department of Education published a proposed rule that would make it easier to recognize new accreditors across higher education. Trump has called accreditation a “secret weapon” to rein in the far-left institutional capture of higher education.
Despite the fact that the ABA claims to have 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) maintain those overtures are simply biding time until a Democrat administration comes back in.