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Senator Jim Banks reintroduced legislation on May 1, 2025, designed to ban accreditors from forcing colleges and universities to adopt race- or sex-based admissions preferences as a condition of accreditation. Under Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), institutions of higher learning are prohibited from using race preferences in admissions. The bill would protect them from accreditor pressure to violate the law. If enacted, the bill would also require accreditors to evaluate a school’s commitment to academic freedom. Both prohibitions align with President Trump’s recent executive order, Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education.
While the original bill—introduced by Senator Marco Rubio in the 118th Congress—prohibited accreditors from considering “the diversity, equity, and inclusion policies of an institution” and “the racial composition of the accepted applicants, students or the faculty or staff,” the new bill specifically bars accrediting agencies from “impos[ing] requirements, establish[ing] standards, conduct[ing] investigations, or mak[ing] recommendations concerning” the race, color, sex, or national origin composition of the student body, faculty, or staff, including those in “leadership roles” and those “who receive honors or special commendations.”
In the wake of SFFA, colleges and universities have scrambled to adapt their admissions processes; some are covertly exploring new strategies to maintain racial and ethnic diversity on campus using race-neutral means. While some schools seek non-racial information as a proxy for race to achieve internal diversity, equity and inclusion goals, other schools feel pressured to do the same because accrediting agencies are known to threaten de-accreditation when their racial and ethnic diversity standards are unmet.
Earlier this year, two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights—Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow—sent a letter to Senator Bill Cassidy, Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, alerting him to the apparent conflict between existing accreditation standards and the SFFA opinion and urging Congress to act now to rein in accreditors.
