On March 16, 2026, Defending Education (DE) submitted a comment to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which had asked for input on changes to the rules for admission to the Tennessee bar. One option is to reduce the state’s reliance on American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation in setting education requirements to take the bar exam.
The ABA should have no role in accrediting law schools. Though it claims to speak for the whole legal profession, the ABA is an ideologically driven activist group that represents a small fraction of practicing lawyers and regularly backs divisive political causes. That activism shapes its accreditation standards. By threatening to pull accreditation, the ABA has pushed law schools to adopt discriminatory admissions and hiring practices and to parrot its views on diversity and “bias” in the legal profession.
Tennessee does not need the ABA to make sure law students are ready for the bar exam and the practice of law. As changes in Texas and Florida show, there is more than one path to reform. DE urges the Tennessee Supreme Court to adopt other ways of accrediting law schools that do not force schools to discriminate or violate academic freedom.
Read the full comment below:
