The number of Black students entering many of the nation’s most elite law schools declined this year, according to data released on Monday by the American Bar Association.
The drops, including at the University of Virginia and Northwestern University, continue a trend that began in fall 2024 after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the use of affirmative action in university admissions a year earlier.
The New York Times examined the A.B.A. admissions data from 18 of the nation’s top law schools and found that first-year Black enrollment had increased at only four, including at Harvard, which enrolled 50 Black law students this fall compared with 19 last year. At Georgetown University, first-year Black enrollment jumped to 67 this year compared with 30 last year. Two other elite law schools, Columbia and Stanford, saw a slight upward tick in the number of Black students.
The changes have implications for the long-term racial make up of the profession, including who oversees and argues cases in the nation’s top courtrooms. Top-ranked schools typically supply graduates to the nation’s elite law firms and federal courts, where they serve as clerks and go on to be judges. Currently, all but one member of the Supreme Court attended either Harvard or Yale Law.
David Wilkins, a law professor at Harvard, who has argued that diversity in law is important because most of the world is not white, celebrated the increase in Black first-year students at his school.
“The Supreme Court decision is clearly making things more difficult,” Professor Wilkins said. He also attributed the broader declines to the “mood in the country from the administration and others,” referring to President Trump’s campaign to end diversity programs and preferences in schools.
The American Bar Association recently suspended the use of law school diversity standards in accrediting schools, under pressure from the Trump administration.
Opponents of diversity efforts in university admissions argue that they undermine merit and create an unlevel playing field, and that they could possibly stigmatize those they are seeking to help by suggesting they are inferior.
Edward Blum, whose nonprofit organization, Students for Fair Admissions, filed the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court, argued for expanding opportunities for students early in life, not racial preferences, as the solution to increasing diversity.
“Law schools applicants should be evaluated on their academic qualifications, personal achievements and economic background — not on their race or ethnicity,” he said in a statement.
The demographic shifts at law schools mirror broader admissions trends at selective undergraduate programs that previously relied on race to create more diverse freshman classes.
But law school classes are typically small, complicating efforts to measure trends, even as experts caution that one or two years of data may not reflect long term trends. Still, several top law schools saw changes this year that, on a percentage basis, were significant.
At the Carey Law School at the University of Pennsylvania, 10 Black first-year students enrolled this year compared with 19 last year and 22 in fall 2023, according to the A.B.A. data.
At the University of Virginia School of Law, 10 Black first-year students enrolled this year compared with 26 last year and 33 in 2023. The Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern enrolled 15 Black first-year students this year compared with 20 last year.
At Washington University in St. Louis, Black first-year students declined to five this year, compared with 18 last year.
At Yale, 22 members of the entering class this year were Black compared with 25 last year.
At Harvard Law, the increase in Black students made up for a significant decrease the year before. Immediately after the Supreme Court decision, the number of Black students dropped to 19 from 46 a year earlier.
Black students made up about 3.5 percent of the entering class last year. The numbers were a jolt to Harvard, which had not seen such low numbers since the 1960s. Harvard Law has been known for educating some of the nation’s best-known Black attorneys, including President Barack Obama and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In a statement, Harvard Law said that the school would follow the law and that it also continued to “believe that a student body composed of persons with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences is a vital component of legal education.”
Professor Wilkins said that the school had worked within the law to “encourage excellent Black students as well as other student to apply and, once they were accepted, convinced them that this was a good place to go to law school.”
The A.B.A. data showed that the percent of Black students entering the nation’s 196 law schools, overall, held fairly steady at 7.6 percent compared with 7.7 percent a year ago. Overall first-year admissions at the nation’s law schools increased by 7 percent nationally.
Justin Driver, a Yale Law professor who has written frequently about the Supreme Court and affirmative action, said any decline in Black law students would spill over into society and, “I fear, foment tomorrow’s decline in Black partners, judges, executives, politicians and academics.”
Hispanic law students entering first-year law studies remained fairly steady at about 14 percent, according to the data.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
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