American Bar Association Standard 303(c) Comment Opportunity

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has opened a comment period on a proposal to repeal Standard 303(c), the requirement that law schools provide mandatory bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism training at two points in a student’s legal education.

The deadline is July 6, 2026, at 5:00 PM Central Time.

How to submit your comment:

Written comments must be:

  • Addressed to Daniel R. Thies, Council Chair
  • Submitted as a PDF attachment
  • Emailed to [email protected]

The Council will review all comments ahead of its August meeting, and comments are posted publicly on the Section’s website. 

Why this repeal is necessary

Standard 303(c) gave the ABA a tool to mandate ideological instruction as a condition of accreditation. The ABA has been explicit that DEI “permeates everything we do internally and externally,” backed by its own Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Center. The standard pushed every ABA-accredited law school to incorporate “cultural competency,” “anti-racism,” and similar frameworks into required coursework, regardless of whether any individual school wanted that approach. Repealing 303(c) removes a federally-leveraged mechanism that turned one accreditor’s preferences into a nationwide curricular requirement, regardless of what any individual school, state, or student wanted.

What we’re watching for

The Council’s memo proposes folding a “communicating effectively across differences” skill into Standard 302 as a learning outcome, rather than keeping it as a freestanding requirement in 303(c). The actual replacement language hasn’t been drafted yet.

A learning-outcomes model could be a meaningful improvement, letting schools decide how, and whether, to address the underlying skill rather than running mandated sessions on a fixed schedule. That flexibility only matters if it’s paired with a clear limit: as an accreditor, the ABA should not mandate specific viewpoints or ideologies, no matter how the requirement is packaged. 

Comments should welcome the repeal of 303(c) as a standalone curricular mandate, while making clear that any future Standard 302 learning outcome must:

  • Avoid reintroducing race-based or ideologically prescriptive frameworks under new terminology
  • Leave the substance of any “communication” training entirely to each school’s discretion, with no accreditation pressure tied to specific viewpoints or content