Minority Enrollment Appears to Be Holding Steady at Top U.S. Law Schools
Early data from top U.S. law schools shows the percentage of nonwhite students enrolling this year has remained mostly unchanged following the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring colleges and universities from considering race in admissions decisions.
Six of the top twenty U.S. law schools—as ranked by U.S. News & World Report—have disclosed racial diversity data on their websites and of those, five reported that the percentage of first-year students of color this fall increased or remained steady this year. One school said that figure declined.
The five that reported either no change or increases in the percentage of minorities in their entering classes were the University of Virginia School of Law; the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law; Cornell Law School; Vanderbilt University Law School; and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Minority enrollment for first-year classes at those five law schools averaged 44%.
The University of California, Berkeley School of Law was the sole law school of the six to post a year-over-year decline—falling to 50% for students of color from last year’s 57% rate. A Berkeley Law spokesperson said the California school did not change its admissions process and that the makeup of its class fluctuates every year.
Representatives of Vanderbilt, Cornell and UCLA’s law schools declined to comment on the composition of their first-year classes. Virginia and USC Law also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The data that most schools provided does not reflect possible shifts between different minority groups such as Asian, Black, and Hispanic students.
Schools will be required by the middle of October to report their minority enrollment numbers to the American Bar Association, the accrediting body of U.S. law schools. That data will provide breakdowns for the different demographic groups.
Last year was the final law school class admitted before the affirmative action ban was fully in effect and collectively the most racially diverse on record at 40 percent for students of color.
In the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
That ruling does not bar colleges and universities from knowing applicants’ race, but many law schools chose to withhold that information from admissions officers starting this year in order to ensure compliance with the decision. Once they have enrolled students, schools can access that information from applications or by simply polling their new class.
For law schools, the full impact of the affirmative admissions ban may have been blunted by the fact that this year’s applicant pool was both 6% larger and more racially diverse than the previous year, according to data from the Law School Admission Council. Applicants of color accounted for nearly 48% of the pool, up from about 47% in 2023.
In past years, many law schools touted the diversity of their new classes as soon as they arrived on campus in August and early September.
Some legal consultants point to the fear of lawsuits as a possible reason for the delay.
This year’s relative lack of racial data, a shift from previous years when schools “all used to put up their diversity numbers” as soon as possible, could mean that schools are waiting for their peer schools to report first, said law school admissions consultant Mike Spivey. That delay, he said, could be a bid to reduce their chance of becoming the first targets of lawsuits.
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