ABA must face conservative group's lawsuit over diversity scholarships

By Karen Sloan Jan 21 (Reuters) - The American Bar Association must face a prominent conservative group’s lawsuit challenging the legality of its diversity scholarships for law students, a federal judge in Chicago ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall denied the ABA’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed in April by the American Alliance for Equal Rights—a group led by Edward Blum, who was the architect of the 2023 Supreme Court affirmative action case that barred the consideration of race in college admissions. The Alliance alleged that the ABA’s 26-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship program discriminated against white applicants by making them ineligible. The ABA said in court documents that it distributes 20 to 25 $15,000 Legal Opportunity Scholarships annually. An ABA spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday, citing the ongoing nature of the case. “As much as the ABA tried to obfuscate its discriminatory policy, the court wisely decided to let this case go forward,” Blum said. The ABA argued that the Alliance had no grounds to sue because the member it represents had not taken “concrete steps” to apply to the scholarship and had suffered no harm. The judge disagreed, finding that the Alliance member—a white male who applied to law school in the fall of 2025 and gathered the materials to apply for the ABA’s scholarship but was ineligible—had standing. Gotschall did not take up the ABA’s argument that the scholarship is protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, ruling that “further factual development” was needed to address whether the scholarship guidelines qualified as protected speech. The ruling also did not address modifications the ABA made in October that eliminated the requirement that scholarship applicants come from “ethnic minority” or “underrepresented racial” groups. Current applicants insteadmust demonstrate “a strong commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The Alliance notified the court of the amended scholarship rules in a November filing, faulting the ABA for failing to disclose or publicly announce the changes and arguing that the discrimination case should proceed. The Alliance said that the time that its lawsuit was not moot and it is seeking a “backward-looking request for nominal damages.” An ABA spokesperson told Reuters in November that prior to the lawsuit, the ABA’s Board of Governors passed a resolution reaffirming its goal of enhancing diversity in the legal profession while also directing the organization not to base eligibility for their programs on “particular group identities.” Read more: ABA drops ‘minority’ requirement from law student scholarship amid lawsuit ABA defends its diversity scholarships as protected free speech