Daria Rose, a practicing attorney and Yale Law School graduate, recently sounded the alarm for her 62,400 Instagram followers about a seismic shift in legal education.
In a recent post, Rose — who goes by @dailynmonrosee — explained that Texas and Florida have cut ties with the American Bar Association (ABA), and why that decision should worry anyone who cares about justice, democracy, or the future of the legal profession.
Her conclusions were troubling, to say the least.
Here’s why that matters.
What ABA accreditation actually does
In early January, Texas became the first state in 43 years to drop the requirement that aspiring lawyers graduate from an ABA-accredited law school. A ruling by the Texas Supreme Court now allows graduates of non-ABA-approved schools to sit for the Texas bar exam. Florida quickly followed, because… It’s Florida.
Supporters frame the change as freeing states from a meddling national body. But as Rose explained, “The American Bar Association is basically like the NCAA, but for lawyers. It’s not the team, it’s not the league, but they do determine eligibility. They’re responsible for standardizing law school and legal education.”
That standardization matters because “if you go to an ABA-accredited law school, you can generally sit for the bar exam in any state,” Rose explained. A law degree earned in Ohio can allow someone to practice in North Carolina. ABA accreditation creates national portability, consistent academic rigor, and professional legitimacy.
Without it, law degrees become geographically trapped and politically vulnerable.
DEI backlash dressed up as reform
The move by Texas Republicans is part of a broader campaign to vilify diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI has been reframed as favoritism rather than what it actually was: A corrective measure allowing overqualified Black people to potentially access institutions historically reserved for white mediocrity.
Destroying DEI doesn’t create fairness. It clears the runway for fantastically average white people to continue receiving preference — a form of affirmative action that never gets named as such — while Blackfolk are still required to be twice as good just to get half as far.
Trump tantrum, national consequences
So why did Texas and Florida suddenly decide the ABA was unacceptable?
According to Rose, “It’s really about punishment.” During the last presidential cycle, the ABA openly criticized President Donald J. Trump for his disregard for the rule of law.
“He didn’t like this. A lot of the people on the right did not like this, and they said the ABA had become a left-leaning, terrible machine,” posted Rose.
The new Texas policy fits neatly into a broader Republican-led assault on higher education accreditors — and the ABA in particular — which has become a primary target in the anti-DEI crusade.
“This year, the Texas Supreme Court decided that law schools in Texas were not going to associate with the ABA anymore,” Rose warned. “This has real consequences.”
Recipe for disaster
Those consequences begin inside the classroom.
“By getting rid of the ABA, the education is no longer standardized,” Rose said. “Politicians get a larger say over the curriculum, the faculty, the funding, and most importantly, the ideology.”
With the Texas Legislature dominated by fire-red MAGA extremism and hostility toward anyone who isn’t wealthy, white, “Christian,” “heterosexual,” and male, this should alarm everyone. This is the same political tradition that once declared slavery, Indigenous genocide, Japanese internment, medical apartheid, and voter suppression legal. Giving that worldview greater control over the law itself risks dragging Texas backward into the booty crack of the European dark ages.
Public law schools, Black lawyers take the hit
Elite schools will survive.
“Harvard’s going to be fine. Stanford’s going to be fine,” Rose said.” Their graduates will still clerk, still get hired,” and still move freely across state lines.
“It’s public law schools and those students that are going to suffer,” she explained. “Without ABA accreditation, you’re essentially trapped in your state.”
For Houston, the implications are enormous. TSU’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law produces 43% of practicing African-American lawyers in Texas and 17% nationwide. Without ABA accreditation, that pipeline of Black legal talent will shrink dramatically.
Austen L. Parrish, dean of UC Irvine School of Law, warned that schools without national reach become “less attractive to students” and risk the same instability seen at unaccredited schools elsewhere.
All Texans impacted
But please recognize, this isn’t just a law school issue.
“Then the politicians can decide who gets to become a lawyer,” Rose said. “And if you can control who becomes a lawyer, you control the system — the prosecutors, the judges, everything.”
“They know this,” she added. “That’s why they’re doing it.”
University of Houston Law Center Dean Leonard Baynes put it succinctly.
“The order creates uncertainty for legal education in the backdrop of an already chaotic world of higher education,” shared Baynes.
For Black communities already over-policed and under-protected, that uncertainty translates into real danger.
This is not abstract policy. It’s about who the law serves and who it’s used against.
What Houston’s Black community can do
- Organize teach-ins on ABA accreditation and legal access
- Pressure legislators to protect national standards
- Publicly support TSU Thurgood Marshall School of Law
- Partner with civil rights and legal advocacy groups
- Mobilize voters around courts and education policy
