Defending Education Submits Public Comment on Ohio Supreme Court’s Proposed Amendments Regarding Opportunities for Non-ABA Law School Graduates to Sit for the Bar

On July 8, 2026, Defending Education (DE) submitted a letter to the Ohio Supreme Court in response to its call for comments on proposed amendments to the rules governing admission to the Ohio Bar, including the creation of “opportunities for graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools to sit for the Ohio Bar.” Ohio is now the fifth state to consider severing its previous reliance on the American Bar Association as the sole determiner of what constitutes a quality legal education – a federal monopoly it has held since 1952. 

Simply put, the ABA should have no role in accrediting law schools. Though it claims to speak for the legal profession as a whole, the ABA is an ideologically motivated activist organization representing a tiny fraction of the nation’s practicing lawyers, and it regularly endorses and litigates for divisive political causes. And that activism bleeds into the ABA’s accreditation standards, which are designed to promote the Association’s ideological goals rather than ensure academic quality. Under threat of losing their accreditation, the ABA has compelled American law schools to adopt discriminatory admissions and hiring practices and to parrot the ABA’s views on issues of diversity and “bias” in the legal profession.

Ohio does not need to be shackled to the ABA and its ideological bias to ensure that law students are ready to sit for the bar exam and enter the practice of law. As the rule changes adopted by Texas, Florida, and Alabama demonstrate, there is more than one path to reform. The Ohio Supreme Court is free to pursue alternative models for accrediting law schools that do not force schools to discriminate or violate academic freedom, and DE encourages it to do so.

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