Two major US state bar associations have pushed back after President Donald Trump took aim at efforts to promote more diversity in the legal profession.
Trump in an executive order on Tuesday (Jan 21) included state and local bar associations as targets for federal civil probes into private-sector diversity, equity and inclusion programs that may “constitute illegal discrimination or preferences”, along with medical associations, publicly traded companies and major nonprofits and universities.
The State Bar of California, the largest state bar in the country with more than 197,000 active members, said in a statement on Wednesday that the executive order will not affect its programs “as none of our work in this space involves illegal discrimination or preferences”.
The Massachusetts Bar Association’s president, Victoria Santoro, said the organisation’s diversity efforts do not violate the law, adding: “I think there are better ways our federal government could use its time than looking at bar associations.”
The executive order, part of a wider push by Trump to roll back DEI in the public and private sectors, escalates pressure from conservatives on legal industry diversity programs that gained steam after the US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision barring the consideration of race in college admissions.
Edward Blum, a conservative activist and architect of the Supreme Court affirmative action case, has challenged diversity programs in the legal profession. He said on Wednesday the new executive order should force bar associations to end sex and race quotas for board memberships and “may foreclose the need for further state-by-state legal challenges to these unfair and illegal policies”.
Bar associations are mandatory or voluntary groups, typically funded through member dues, that advocate for attorneys and sometimes oversee attorney licensing and discipline.
They have emerged in recent decades in many states as vocal proponents of diversity, creating programs to promote ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ lawyers and other underrepresented groups in leadership posts and throughout the legal profession. While those groups have steadily gained ground, whites make up 77 per cent of American lawyers but only 60 per cent of the US population, according to the American Bar Association.
