By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
The Florida Supreme Court has assembled a committee to figure out how to stop an outsider from inflicting what it considers radical leftist standards like diversity on Florida lawyers.
That outsider is the American Bar Association, which has tangled with the Supreme Court over diversity in legal education. Now the hyper-conservative court wants to ditch a 70-year-old rule that says only graduates of ABA-approved law schools can take the Florida Bar exam, the gateway to a law license.
Knowledgeable observers say that ABA-opposition politics is driving this project. That’s not how Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muniz framed the issue for the Florida Bar News, however. 
“Reasonable questions have arisen about the ABA’s accreditation standards on racial and ethnic diversity in law schools and about the ABA’s active political engagement. Scholars have also questioned how ABA accreditation requirements affect costs and innovation in legal education,” Muniz remarked about the court’s March 12 order creating the six-member committee.
The order sets a Sept. 30 deadline for this working group, chaired by former conservative justice Ricky Polston, to report back to the Supreme Court. Two of the state’s dozen law schools, at the University of Florida and Florida State University, are represented on the committee.
In the meantime, opinions about changing the licensing protocol are starting to bubble up. Among those firmly opposed is Leroy Pernell, former dean of the law school at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.
“I am very much concerned and disturbed by this. I think it’s the wrong way to go,” said Pernell, now a FAMU law professor. He stressed that he was speaking for himself, not for his school, when he said that removing ABA accreditation from licensing requirements would handicap Florida lawyers.
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