In early 2026, both Florida’s and Texas’s Supreme Courts opted to drop their requirement that the states’ lawyers graduate from American Bar Association (ABA)–accredited law schools. This opened the door to alternative accreditors, who often come in the form of state-based institutions (for instance, most non-ABA-accredited law schools are located in California, where they are accredited by the California Bar Association). Though Florida’s court opinion stated that the purpose of the ruling was to allow more opportunity for high-quality legal education in schools committed to non-discrimination and the free exchange of ideas, Republican officials had been targeting the ABA for reasons centered around partisan politics rather than educational access. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had the ABA in his sights as part of wider pushback against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) standards, calling the ABA “a captured, far left organization.” The broader conservative crackdown on DEI has led the ABA to abandon these efforts altogether.
Diverging from ABA-accredited law schools due to political motivations like these raises broad concerns. Professional degrees require a certain level of consistent training standards, without which interstate mobility would prove difficult and public trust in professional degrees could be eroded. Almost all US states currently require that students graduate from an ABA-accredited law school in order to be eligible to take the bar in their state. By removing that requirement, it encourages students to attend schools that may not meet the rigorous, comprehensive requirements set by the ABA and thus inhibits them from practicing law in other states. While all law school graduates, regardless of their institutions’ accreditation status, must still pass the bar exam to practice law, the exam serves only as a baseline measure of competency post-graduation. It does not make up for the three years of law education that shapes the mindsets and understanding of law that ABA-accredited law schools provide.
There are 32 non-ABA-accredited schools in the country, many of which have alternative approaches to the legal field. Some prioritize a religious emphasis, which does not align with the standards of the ABA. They also often have less competitive admissions processes, use online-only formats, and boast fewer resources, lacking sufficient experiential opportunities and simulation labs. Most significantly, they are not required to follow the ABA’s curriculum standards designed to ensure rigorous training for future legal professionals. These include at least two writing credits, a course on professional responsibility, the requirement that significant portions of courses be taught by full-time faculty, and a requirement for a six-credit experiential learning experience. These standards shape the professional foundation that an ABA-accredited law school provides, not just preparing students to pass the bar exam, but molding them into responsible, ethically grounded graduates prepared to serve clients and uphold the public’s trust in the American legal system.
This shift in Florida and Texas, with states like Tennessee and Ohio perhaps poised to follow suit, reflects the consequences of a decentralized federal education system. This has already been observed in the context of K-12 education disparities, which, although different from the standardized nature of professional licensure in law, are often also driven by political tension in particular states. Curricula, graduation requirements, and other standards differ from state to state. One of the biggest disparities is in civics education, where Florida’s department of education places an emphasis on “patriotism” while also limiting discussion on race, a crucial topic in any history classroom. This variation in primary and secondary education already sets the stage for disparities in preparedness and opportunity. For example, Florida ranked fourth lowest in the nation for average SAT score in 2024, 308 points below Kansas, which boasts the highest average scores. The recent shift away from ABA accreditation brings this concern to professional higher education, where the stakes are much higher.
Other professional degrees have successfully implemented alternative accreditation while maintaining high standards of training and competency, allowing for flexibility while ensuring that graduates meet national benchmarks for rigorous training and professional experience. A notable example is the US medical system— there are two different pathways to become a licensed doctor, neither of which compromises standards and both of which are overseen by a respected body of experts that determines requirements for each. To become a doctor, students either need a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO). MD degrees are granted by allopathic programs which emphasize the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, while the osteopathic programs grant DO degrees and have a more holistic approach to patient care. DO students, on average, have slightly lower GPAs and test scores when applying to medical school, but this does not reflect the quality of students in these programs as a whole. This slight disparity can be explained by DO schools accepting a larger proportion of nontraditional students who may have substantial pre-medical or life experiences paired with lower statistics. Their osteopathic training is similar to that of MDs in rigour and content, with the differences being in their approaches to medicine. DOs focus additional time on osteopathic manipulative techniques as part of their medical education, which are techniques to relieve back pain, strained muscles, and other ailments.
Both pathways are still required to complete an internship and residency post-medical school, where they often work side by side. The biggest difference between MDs and DOs. is simply flexibility in how they approach care, with both methods having validity for patient care. This is done without compromising standards, with a study examining the outcomes of over 300,000 Medicare patients (deaths, costs, remission rates, etc.) finding that patients of MDs and DOs had nearly identical results for all measures. Law schools with alternative approaches to the legal field can implement a similar model, where differences in method do not have to correspond to worse quality. An alternative accreditor which maintains baseline standards as rigorous as the ABA can accredit non-ABA-accredited law schools, similar to the medical system.
Comparing educational fragmentation in K-12 education, which has few baseline standards, against the U.S. medical system, which has baseline standards for the MD and DO pathways differing only by methodical approach, demonstrates the importance of standardization to ensure consistency and competency in care. The consequences of failing to enforce standardisation are already apparent. The difference in quality between ABA and non-ABA accredited law schools in California is profound: A 2022 report found that first-time California bar pass rates were 73 percent for graduates of ABA-accredited schools, compared to just 30 percent for graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools.
The motivations behind expanding accreditation beyond the ABA are political, and the bar exam is merely a test of minimum competency rather than a holistic measure of readiness to practice law. Thus, the United States needs to establish federal baseline standards for professional education that institutions should implement as a minimum. These standards would exist not to improve bar exam pass rates, but to ensure a degree in law continues to be a national guarantee of professional readiness as developed by the law school experience and resources. Regardless of a school’s political or religious stance, the training provided should be rigorously held to a baseline.
Though it is too early to understand the impacts of dropping ABA accreditation on the quality of law graduates, developing an institution to regulate the resources and requirements of non-ABA-accredited law schools would allow graduates who take diverse approaches to law to still meet necessary standards throughout their law education. This would ensure students are evaluated across their entire degree and given adequate resources to succeed rather than just relying on the bar exam to determine their fitness to practice law.