Affirmative Action Group Assails Commission Report on Affirmative Action in Law Schools

Washington, DC – Today, Americans for a Fair Chance, a project of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF), assailed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) “report,” Affirmative Action in American Law Schools, as part of a continued assault on affirmative action—this time in law schools.

The report, scheduled for release today, uses a flawed and extensively disputed study to underpin its recommendations to end affirmative action in law schools. Additionally, it uses the study as the basis to further other broad-based and burdensome recommendations.

The report calls for the enactment of legislation based on a flawed amendment offered in the 109th Congress– an amendment that met overwhelming bipartisan defeat and whose intrusive and burdensome reporting requirements would have undermined student privacy and the academic independence of law schools. 

Finally, the report’s recommendation for the American Bar Association (ABA) to revise their adopted diversity standard, misconstrues the implication of the standard, further hobbling law schools under the guise of freeing them.

“Again, as in similar past reports, we find the USCCR being cavalier with facts and going to great lengths to justify its policy recommendation to end affirmative action,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and counselor to LCCR’s public education arm, LCCREF.  “The Commission seems set on sabotaging the very mission it was designed to protect—the enforcement of our nation’s civil rights laws.  This report not only undermines the country’s commitment to equal opportunity, it diminishes our highest ideals.”