The SALT Equal Opportunity Committee vigilantly promotes the goal that the legal academy and profession should reflect the rich diversity of the nation.  SALT has participated in litigation, submissions to the American Bar Association Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (ABA Council), presentations to members of Congress and their staffs, and testimony before accrediting agencies to continue the struggle for equal opportunity and equity in admissions, hiring, retention, and promotion at law schools towards the goal of an academy, bench, and bar that is truly representative.  

A Disturbing Trend in Law School Admissions: Since a high in the early 1990s, there has been a decline in the number of enrolled African American and Mexican American law school students despite an increase in the number of applicants, the number of seats available, and overall improvement in these applicants’ test scores.  Columbia Law School and SALT documented this decline in a website launched in January 2008, and newly revised in January 2010, called “A Disturbing Trend in Law School Admissions,” which provides a statistical analysis of law school applications, and offers “best practices” to fully understand the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). View the final Report with Recommendations for the ABA's Presidential Initiative on Diversity in the Legal Profession.  Comments were solicited in response to the Advance Copy and many comments have been incorporated into this final iteration.  All comments can be found on the ABA website. 

SALT Comments on ABA Presidential Initiative on Diversity in the Legal Profession:  The ABA Presidential Diversity Initiative, convened to examine the diversity crisis within the legal profession, issued its preliminary report at the Mid-Winter ABA meeting.  Click here to download a copy of the ABA Presidential Diversity Initiative, Report on Diversity in the Profession, February 2010.  The authors of the Report on Diversity invited comments and on March 15, 2010, SALT submitted its letter, applauding the effort, but asking some hard questions about why the legal profession lags behind other professions in reflecting the demographics of the country.  Click here to download a copy of SALT's March 15, 2010 Comments. 

Click here to download a copy of the April 2010 Final Edition of the ABA Presidential Diversity Initiative, The Next Steps.

Resources on Affirmative Action:  SALT invites members to submit books, articles, and videos that provide best practices that encourage and promote diversity within the legal academy. 

Catholic University Columbus School of Law's  March 2011 Pursuing Diversity in the New Economy: A Shared Responsibility, featuring video presentations and resources. 

Elizabeth Rindsdorf Parker, Dean, University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, "A Dean's Dilemma or Lessons in Diversity, 37 University of Toledo Law Review 117 (2005).

Sarah Redfield, Franklin Pierce Law School just published:  Diversity Realized Putting the Walk with the Talk for Diversity in the Legal Profession, ISBN: 978-1-60042-096-2, December 2009, Paperback, 268 pages, $34.95.  Download a pdf of the cover. 

Grutter v. Bollinger: Even before Grutter v. Bollinger was decided, it was predictable that a decision legitimizing any consideration of race in the law school admissions process would mobilize those who oppose efforts to address the effects of racism, past and present.  At the same time, many African American law professors and their sympathetic colleagues, were worried about the pincer effect on law school ethos, the world view of faculty and administrations, of U.S. News and World Reports rankings, and the American Bar Association preoccupation with bar examination results.  The definition of “merit” and who is “qualified” to attend law school, both promoted as exceedingly narrow – restricted in the end to only one variable – LSAT scores.  SALT has insisted for many years that there is an over-reliance on the LSAT score and that its impact on traditionally underrepresented minorities is devastating.  Click here to read SALT on the LSAT, December 2003.  

Vigilance is required, so many years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because of aggressive campaigns to limit a variety of methods that promote admissions to students of color through legislation, policies and practice, and ballot initiative.

Gender and Race Diversity in US Law Firms:  Read the latest on Women of Color in US Law Firms, August 2009. 

SALT During the Bush Administration: Despite the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation that race may be used as a factor in law school admissions, the Bush administration’s Education Secretaries both promoted “race neutral” admissions practices in official materials and threatened the ABA Council with decertification as the accrediting agency of American law schools after it adopted Standard 212, a stronger diversity requirement.  With ideologues in the Department of Education and in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, SALT engaged in a campaign to educate members of Congress about the threat being posed to the ABA Council by these concerted forces.  

After President Bush appointed ideologues to serve on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, rather than promote ways to include African Americans and other people of color, the Commission attacked affirmative action admissions policies in law schools. Two aspects of its April 2007 report, Affirmative Action in American Law Schools were particularly disturbing: 

1. It joined the U.S. Department of Education in calling on the American Bar Association to drop its accreditation requirement that law schools demonstrate concrete action taken to achieve diversity in enrollment. This ABA requirement had been enacted to ensure that legal education was available to all qualified students no matter what their race or ethnicity. 

2. The Civil Rights Commission stepped beyond its authority to request Congress to demand that every law school in the nation explain how it interprets the ABA diversity requirement and require a “bright line bar passage” standard that all law schools must meet. 

On January 3, 2008, the Congressional Research Service issued a report "Political Balance Requirements at the United States Commission  on Civil Rights," holding that the appointment process used by the President to stack the Commission with ideological Republicans "violative of the political balance requirements of the statute."  

In June 2008, the The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California issued African American and Latino Enrollment Trends among Medicine, Law, Business, and Public Affairs Graduate Programs, documenting the demographics of American professional schools and the need for more diverse admissions to assure a generation of leadership.  

 Roadmap to Diversity, March 2008 publication by the American Association of Medical Colleges that includes a self-assessment and tools to engage the entire institution in dedicated efforts to diversify its student enrollments.

In December 2007, SALT submitted a chapter in a larger submission contesting United States compliance with the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, CERD.  

Click here to access the entire US Human Rights Network submission.  

To download the SALT portion of the CERD “shadow” report, click here.  

Higher Education Act, August, 2008:  Language in the Higher Education Act amendments stopped the Department of Education from its quest to decertify the ABA Council as the accrediting agency for American law schools.  NACIQI, the board that approves the certification bodies for institutions of higher education, was restructured, and within the Act, the NACIQI could not be reconvened until after January 20, 2009, and the new Congress is in session.  

NACIQI is currently being reconstituted with an appointment formula that divests some power from the Department of Education.   

Voter Initiatives to End Affirmative Action: Only two state initiatives--in Colorado and Nebraska-- made it to the November 2008 ballot to roll back the vestiges of affirmative action that Grutter v. Bollinger preserved.  SALT members produced editorial content for local newspapers and media in Nebraska, and SALT produced three short films for viral distribution on the internet.  In all of these pieces, SALT explained the benefits of equal opportunity and the need for race-conscious programs until the vestiges of racism and segregation were ended.  

With the Arizona legislature poised to place an anti-affirmative action initiative on the November 2010 ballot and litigation already on-going in Missouri, SALT is prepared to provide scholarship, speakers, and editorial content to help educate voters in affected states.  

Working with the Issues in Legal Education Committee, the goal is a truly representative law school student population, and a bench and bar that represents the depth of diversity in this country.   That goal remains a core of SALT’s mission.