Dear Chair Thies and Members of the Council:

I write in my individual capacity to urge the Council to reject the proposed repeal of Standard 206 (Diversity and Inclusion). I am an attorney licensed in Oregon, a U.S. Army veteran, and the 2026 President of the Oregon State Bar. I also serve as Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Development and Externship Director at Willamette University School of Law, where I have spent years working directly with law students as they navigate the profession's entry barriers --work that has given me a firsthand view of who the pipeline reaches and, just as importantly, who it does not. I am also a first-generation college graduate and attorney who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, the son of immigrants, and who deployed to Afghanistan during law school. I submit these comments not as an institutional representative but as someone whose life has been shaped by the barriers this standard was designed to address -- and by the profession's fitful but genuine efforts to lower them.

The proposed repeal of Standard 206 is unnecessary, premature, and contrary to the long-term interests of the legal profession and the public it serves. I urge the Council to decline to repeal Standard 206 and instead to pursue alternative approaches that preserve the standard's core purpose while addressing genuine compliance complexities.

I. ​The Rationale Offered for Repeal Does Not Justify Permanent Elimination of the Standard.

The Council's stated basis for repeal is that enacted and proposed state laws have made it "impossible" to apply a meaningful Standard 206 uniformly to every accredited school. This is a real and serious challenge. But difficulty of uniform application is not the same as absence of value, and the Council's response to that difficulty should be calibration -- not surrender.

The ABA accredits law schools in jurisdictions with widely varying rules on everything from bar admission character and fitness to clinical supervision to foreign law school graduates. The existence of state-level legal variation has never before been treated as grounds to eliminate a

substantive accreditation standard. The Council has consistently found workable interpretive frameworks when standards intersect with divergent state law. There is no principled reason why diversity and inclusion should be the exception.

If the challenge is uniform enforceability, the appropriate remedy is a revised standard with flexibility built in -- one that articulates aspirational commitments while accounting for state-law constraints on specific implementation methods. Repeal goes further than the problem requires. It sends a signal to prospective law students, legal educators, and the profession at large that the ABA has abandoned its institutional commitment to a diverse and inclusive legal profession.

That signal would be wrong, and it would be lasting.

II. ​The Legal Profession's Diversity Deficit Remains Severe and Has Real Consequences for Access to Justice.

Standard 206 exists because the legal profession has a documented and persistent diversity problem. Lawyers are among the least racially diverse of any major profession. The communities least well-served by the legal system -- communities like the one I grew up in -- are precisely those that most lack lawyers who share their background, their language, or their lived experience of the legal system's impact.

This is not merely an equity concern, though it is emphatically that. It is an access-to-justice concern. Research consistently demonstrates that diversity in the legal profession improves representation quality, expands access for underserved populations, and strengthens public trust in legal institutions. The ABA has long recognized this connection. Eliminating the only accreditation standard that requires law schools to affirmatively engage with it would undermine decades of that work.

I have practiced immigration law in Oregon, representing clients who are often navigating life-altering legal processes in a second language, with limited resources, and with profound uncertainty about their future in this country. The attorneys who most effectively serve those clients are often attorneys who come from similar communities -- who understand not just the

law but the fear, the stakes, and the barriers to seeking help. Law schools that are meaningfully diverse produce more of those attorneys. Standard 206 incentivizes law schools to be meaningfully diverse. Its repeal removes that incentive at the worst possible time.

III. ​The Suspension of Standard 206 Has Already Caused Harm; Repeal Would Compound It.

Standard 206 was suspended in February 2025. Over the past year, that suspension has given law schools permission -- whether intended or not -- to deprioritize diversity recruitment, reduce investment in belonging and inclusion infrastructure, and defer difficult institutional conversations about who the profession is for. The suspension was presented as a temporary,

cautious response to a fluid legal landscape. Repeal would convert a temporary concession into a permanent capitulation.

The Council notes that it "remains committed to ensuring that law schools are able to comply with accreditation standards and the requirements of applicable laws." That commitment is not in question. What is in question is whether the Council will also remain committed to ensuring that the legal profession reflects the diversity of the nation it serves. Repeal answers that question in the negative. I do not believe that is the Council's intention -- but it will be the effect.

IV. ​The Council Should Pursue Targeted Revision Rather Than Repeal.

I urge the Council to consider the following alternatives before proceeding with repeal:

First, revise Standard 206 to focus on institutional commitment and good-faith effort rather than specific outcomes or methods. A standard that requires law schools to demonstrate that they are actively engaged with diversity and inclusion -- through recruitment, curriculum, climate assessment, and community engagement -- is both more legally defensible and more durable than one tied to particular programs or practices.

Second, build in explicit state-law flexibility. The standard could include an express provision recognizing that implementation methods may vary based on applicable state law, while preserving the underlying institutional obligation. This is a common and well-accepted drafting approach in regulatory standards.

Third, establish a reporting and transparency mechanism in lieu of enforcement. Even in jurisdictions with restrictive state laws, law schools can be required to collect and publish data on the demographic composition of their student body, faculty, and staff; the barriers they have identified; and the lawful steps they are taking to address them. Transparency is itself a form of accountability.

Any of these approaches preserves the signal that diversity and inclusion are legitimate and important accreditation values. None requires the Council to enforce methods that violate applicable state law. The binary choice between an unenforceably rigid standard and no standard at all is a false one.

V. ​This Moment Calls for Institutional Courage, Not Retreat.

The legal profession is navigating a period of significant pressure on the values of access, equity, and inclusion. Institutions that have historically championed those values are being asked --sometimes legally required -- to pull back. The ABA Council has a choice about how to respond to that pressure.

I understand the Council's desire to ensure that accreditation standards can be complied with by every law school in every jurisdiction. That is a legitimate concern. But the ABA's credibility as a steward of the legal profession rests on its willingness to articulate and defend minimum standards of quality and equity, not merely to reflect whatever is currently politically feasible.

Repealing Standard 206 would sacrifice that credibility for administrative convenience.

I became an attorney because someone saw potential in me that my circumstances did not advertise. I went to law school as a first-generation student, a veteran, a father, and a person who had been taught -- implicitly and explicitly -- that the legal profession was not built for people who looked like me or came from where I came from. I know what it costs when that message goes unchallenged. And I know what it means when institutions with the power to challenge it choose not to.

The Council has that power here. I respectfully urge the Council to use it -- not by maintaining an unworkable standard, but by doing the harder work of revising Standard 206 into a form that is enforceable, meaningful, and worthy of the profession we are all trying to sustain.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit these comments.

Respectfully submitted,

Tomás Hernandez

Attorney at Law | Salem, Oregon

Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Assistant Professor of Experiential Learning at Willamette University School of Law

2026 Oregon State Bar President

Submitted in individual capacity only. Institutional affiliations listed for identification purposes