Law graduates in Florida will no longer need to graduate from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) to take the state’s bar exam.

The Florida Supreme Court has just decided to amend its rule, which originally had made the ABA the sole accreditor for law schools and graduating from an ABA-accredited law school was the only way to take the bar examination.
The court has now given a pathway to other accreditor options, amending the rule for law school accreditation to extend to a “programmatic accrediting agency” or “institutional accrediting agency” recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, for example.
The majority said the reason for the rule change was to create opportunities for additional entities to accredit law schools.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who called the ABA “a captured, far-left organization”, had encouraged the state’s high court to sever ties amid conservative backlash against the nearly 150-year-old organization.
Justice Jorge Labarga, the only dissenter, said the ABA “has cultivated unmatched proficiency in dealing with Florida law-school-specific issues that would require decades for any successor to develop.”
Labarga, now the only member of the court not appointed by DeSantis, added that “… refinements can always be made. However, replacing an established entity with an unknown alternative is detrimental in the context of disputes.”
In a statement, the American Bar Association noted that the court’s order says Florida law schools can continue to seek accreditation from the ABA.
The court “reinforces the authority that it has always had over the licensure of JD (juris doctor) graduates and which law schools it recognizes as accredited,” said Jenn Rosato Perea, Managing Director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
Florida is not the first to move away from the ABA. Last week, Uthmeier praised the move by the Texas Supreme Court to cut ties with the ABA and instead accredit law schools itself.
The Trump administration decided over the summer to remove the ABA’s longstanding special access to review federal judicial candidates.
But the Florida Supreme Court was already considering whether to revise its rules on whether anyone who wants to practice law in Florida has to graduate from an ABA-accredited law school.
In March, the Florida Supreme Court had appointed a workgroup to study the issue, and the majority of the Justices said it made its new decision based on that group’s report, which included options for reducing the ABA’s “near monopoly” on law school accreditation.

You can read more about this decision here.

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