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In his April 23 executive order Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education, President Trump stated that “accreditors routinely approve institutions that are low-quality by the most important measures,” noting that “[t]he national six-year undergraduate graduation rate was an alarming 64 percent in 2020.” At the same time, he stated, “accreditors have remained improperly focused on compelling adoption of discriminatory ideology, rather than on student outcomes,” and some even “make the adoption of unlawfully discriminatory practices a formal standard of accreditation, and therefore a condition of accessing Federal aid.”   

The EO singles out three accreditors in particular as negative exemplars: the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (Council), which accredits Juris Doctor programs, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits Doctor of Medicine programs, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) which accredits allopathic and osteopathic medical residency and fellowship programs. The Attorney General and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, the EO directs, should “assess whether to suspend or terminate” each of these entities’ “status as an accrediting agency under federal law”—as well as “investigate and take appropriate action to terminate unlawful discrimination by” law and medical schools or programs pursuant to accreditation standards.

Two of these accreditors have responded by what could be understood as temporizing. On May 9 the ABA Legal Ed Section Council, which had already suspended its “Diversity and Inclusion” Standard 206 through August 2025 after coming under pressure from the Department of Education in mid-February, thereafter extended that suspension through August 2026. This extension is well short of the complete repeal demanded several weeks earlier by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Also on May 9, the ACGME likewise suspended enforcement of its Common Program Requirement I.C (requiring “practices that focus on mission-driven, ongoing, systematic recruitment and retention of a diverse and inclusive workforce”) and Institutional Requirement III.B.8 (a similar requirement), as well as related specialty/subspecialty-specific requirements, noting that it had heard “significant concerns” from constituents “about their ability to comply with some of the ACGME requirements addressing diversity in light of state or federal laws.” That suspension was put into effect pending discussion at ACGME’s June 7-8 board meeting. ACGME has not posted any report of further action following that meeting, so that standard, like the ABA Legal Ed Section Council’s, likely remains suspended.

The accreditor of MD programs, the LCME, however, acted more decisively, voting on May 19 to eliminate Element 3.3 (diversity programs and partnerships), which had contained the diversity language highlighted by the EO as problematic: “engag[ing] in ongoing, systematic, and focused recruitment and retention activities, to achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes among its students, faculty, senior administrative staff, and other relevant members of its academic community.” A 2015 LCME consensus statement, though not technically binding, had indicated that programs would not be in compliance with Element 3.3 if those programs lacked “[e]vidence of effective recruitment and retention programs including the offering and acceptance of positions to qualified student, faculty, and staff applicants who are in the school’s diversity groups.” In voting to eliminate Element 3.3 the LCME made no reference to the EO or federal law, stating that it took action “to remove any real or perceived conflict between the requirements of Element 3.3 and state laws and to ensure that there is a single set of accreditation expectations with which all schools, regardless of their location and current legislative environment, must comply.”

It remains to be seen whether the LCME’s decision to repeal will lead the ACGME or the ABA Higher Ed Section Council to follow suit with respect to their corresponding standards.