Sept 9 (Askume) – Early data from some top U.S. law schools show the share of non-white students enrolling this year will remain roughly unchanged through 2023, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that colleges and universities should not adopt a caste-based system. Consider.
As of September 5, six of the top 20 US law schools ranked by US News and World Report had disclosed some racial diversity data on their websites or provided the data directly to Askume. Five of them reported that the share of black students in the first class rose or remained steady this year. One person said the number has gone down.
The five schools that reported no change or increases in minority enrollment were the University of Virginia School of Law; Cornell University School of Law, and the USC Gould Law Academy; the average first-year minority enrollment rate at these five law schools is 44%.
UC Berkeley School of Law was the only one of the six law schools to report a year-over-year decline — the proportion of black students fell to 50% from 57% last year. A Berkeley Law spokesperson said the California school, which has been under a state-imposed ban on affirmative action since 1996, has not changed its admissions process and its class composition fluctuates from year to year.
Representatives from Vanderbilt Law School, Cornell University Law School and UCLA Law School declined to comment on the composition of their first-year classes. Virginia did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. A spokesperson for USC School of Law said its first-year class “represents a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.”
The data provided by most schools does not reflect the disparities that exist among various minority groups, such as Asian, Black, and Hispanic students.
Schools have until mid-October to report their minority enrollment numbers in December to the American Bar Association, the accrediting body for U.S. law schools. The data will provide detailed information on various demographic groups.
This class was the last to enter the law school before affirmative action took full effect last year, and it is the most racially diverse, with 40 percent of students being black .
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, the Supreme Court struck down the race-conscious admissions programs of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
The decision does not prevent colleges and universities from knowing an applicant’s race, but many law schools are choosing to withhold that information from admissions officers starting this year to ensure compliance with the decision. Once students are enrolled, schools can obtain this information through the application or by conducting surveys on new classes.
According to the Law School Admissions Council, the full impact of the affirmative action ban on law schools may be mitigated by the fact that this year’s applicant pool is 6 percent larger than last year and more racially diverse. About 48% of applicants are people of color, up from about 47% in 2023.
Nearly half of the top 20 law schools told Askume they either did not yet have diversity data for new courses or would not release the data until they formally report it to the ABA.
Some U.S. universities report admissions data by demographic group. For example, the number of freshmen at MIT is down 16% this year , compared with a 31% drop in previous years, which officials attribute to the affirmative action ban.
In past years, many law schools have promoted a variety of new courses when they arrive on campus in August and early September .
Some legal advisers said concerns about litigation could be causing the delay.
AccessLexAaron Taylor, executive director of the Center for Excellence in Legal Education , studies law school diversity and affordability .
He said law schools may have to be “extremely cautious” because an increase in the number of minority students could lead to “threatening letters from some conservative activist groups,” while a drop in the number of minority students could prompt criticism from diversity advocates.
Mike Spivey, the school’s admissions consultant, said the relative lack of racial data this year, in contrast to previous years when schools “released their diversity data early,” could mean the school is waiting for peers to report earlier. He said the delay would reduce the likelihood of becoming the target of litigation.
Read more:
The last law category to be filed before the affirmative action ban was the most diverse on record
Study finds law student diversity declined after affirmative action ban, especially among law students at top schools
