Affirmative Action and J.D. Completion Among Underrepresented People of Color
KEY FINDINGS
We find that states with an affirmative action ban saw a decrease of five percentage-points in uPOC J.D. completion (compared to states without a ban).
Adopting an affirmative action ban leads to an average five percentage point decrease in the proportion of underrepresented people of color (uPOC) completing their law degrees. The size of this decrease grows over time, from a decrease of four percentage points one-year post-ban to 11 percentage points six years post-ban. The average effect and the effect in five of thenine post-ban years observed are statistically significant.
Illustratively, a law school with 100 graduates would expect 11 fewer uPOC J.D. completers six years post-ban.
Take, for example, a law school that graduates 100 total students, of which 20 identify as uPOC. If that school is located in a state that implements a ban in 2008, we would expect the number of uPOC graduates to decrease to nine in 2014. We would also expect the number of non-uPOC graduates to grow from 80 to 91 over the same time. Meanwhile, the percentage of uPOC in the population in those states would grow from an average 20 percent to 22 percent over that same six-year period.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
We await the Supreme Court’s decisions on race-conscious affirmative action policies but expect that their established use will be overturned in the two cases: Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
We used data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and United States Census Bureau to compare uPOC J.D. completion at public colleges in states without an affirmative action ban to states with a ban, and from pre- to post-ban.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Our results demonstrate the important role that race-conscious affirmative action policies have in diversifying law school campuses and, in turn, yielding the educational benefits that flow from that diversity. Race-neutral policies are not as effective in producing diverse campuses, presuming that that law schools in states that implemented a ban on race-conscious affirmative action policies turned to race-neutral methods when the ban was enforced.
We expect that the Supreme Court’s decision is likely to have a similar effect on a national level. Such a decision would substantially decrease the already disproportionately low number of Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander lawyers.
