Texas and Florida have done something long overdue: They have told the American Bar Association to take a hike.

The Lone Star State just reclaimed direct authority over which law schools qualify graduates to sit for the bar exam. Florida followed suit days later, announcing that, effective Oct. 1, 2026, it would no longer treat the ABA as the sole gatekeeper to the legal profession. This was a clean break, not bureaucratic tinkering.

The timing is telling. Just last month, even the Federal Trade Commission—hardly a right-wing agency—called the ABA a monopoly. When even the administrative state recognizes that you have accumulated too much unaccountable power, you have crossed a line.

Conservatives, trained like Pavlov’s dogs to defer to credentialed expertise, kept genuflecting.

So how did we get here? How did states quietly outsource one of their core sovereign functions—deciding who may practice law—to a private organization headquartered in Chicago?

>>> The Shrinking Federal Footprint: Education Returns to the States

The answer is classic late-20th-century centralization. As lawyers increasingly practiced across state lines, “uniformity” became the buzzword. Somewhere along the way, the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar morphed into a national gatekeeper.

State supreme courts, mistaking delegation for sophistication, shrugged and signed off. That arrangement might have worked if the ABA had remained neutral.

It hasn’t.

Over time, the ABA transformed from a professional association into a liberal advocacy group that occasionally remembers it represents lawyers. The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary provides the clearest evidence. The pattern is unmistakable: Originalist and textualist nominees face heightened scrutiny and frequent “not qualified” ratings; living constitutionalists sail through.

The rot goes deeper. The ABA has taken public positions on abortion, LGBTQ issues, and the entire diversity, equity and inclusion catechism that are indistinguishable from Democratic National Committee talking points. It defends left-wing judges, not on grounds of judicial independence—which would at least be principled—but on explicitly political grounds.

In other words, the ABA is a combatant in the culture war, fighting for the other side while demanding that conservatives continue treating it as a neutral referee.

This same dynamic has played out across every captured institution: universities, corporations, professional associations, and even science and medicine. The political left takes control, weaponizes the institution against conservatives, and then screams about “norms” and “institutional integrity” when anyone suggests fighting back. It’s a con game, and conservatives keep falling for it.

That’s why Attorney General Pam Bondi was right to revoke the ABA’s privileged access to non-public information about judicial nominees.

For decades, the ABA enjoyed a backstage pass to lifetime federal appointments. Granting that kind of influence to a left-leaning advocacy organization is like letting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals help pick the secretary of agriculture.

The problem doesn’t stop at judges.

ABA accreditation standards now include ideological tests that have nothing to do with producing competent lawyers. Consider Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g). On paper, it addresses discrimination and harassment. In practice, it has been weaponized to enforce political conformity on contested cultural questions.

When professional standards become instruments of thought control, the profession has lost its way.

Texas and Florida saw the writing on the wall and acted.

>>> Themes for Higher Education Reform

Here’s what should get other states’ attention: No legislature was required. No bruising floor fights. No lobbyists swarming the Capitol. State supreme courts already possess the authority to regulate admission to their own bars. They simply forgot they had it.

Critics will warn of a “race to the bottom,” predicting a flood of incompetent lawyers churned out like fast-food hamburgers. This is nonsense, and it’s insulting. It assumes state supreme courts are either incapable or unwilling to enforce standards. Several states already allow graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools to sit for the bar exam. Civilization remains intact.

State’s highest courts have every incentive to get this right. They are the ones who must deal with lawyers daily. They are far more accountable than distant bureaucrats drafting social justice resolutions in Chicago.

Texas and Florida aren’t being reckless. They are being federalists. They are remembering that, in our constitutional system, it is states, not private ideological cartels, that regulate professions.

The question isn’t whether the ABA should exist. It can continue issuing position papers to its heart’s content. The real question is why states ever allowed themselves to be governed by an organization that decided professional neutrality was optional.

Red states, take note: You don’t need the ABA’s permission to run your legal profession. You never did. Now is the time to act like it.