Calif. Supreme Court requires public release of bar data

The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the State Bar of California must publicly release bar admissions data on law students’ race, grades, exam scores and the schools they attended.

Richard Sander, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and a researcher studying the effects of affirmative action on students in higher education institutions, brought the lawsuit against the State Bar of California, arguing that information regarding law students’ race, the school they went to and whether they passed the bar should be public information.

Sander said he was pleased with the ruling and that he will use the additional data to supplement a study he began in 1991 tracking law students through school and into their careers.

In 2006, Sander requested the release of records regarding applicants’ race and ethnicity, law school, bar exam scores, law school grade point average and LSAT score, among other statistics.

The State Bar rejected the request, and the organization’s Board of Governors confirmed the decision, citing privacy concerns, according to the court document.

The Supreme Court ruling obligates the State Bar of California to release data with all of these missing parts of the bar passage study. The Court decided to withhold students’ names in the data, which Sander said he agreed to, as he said he didn’t think their identities would be necessary for his study.

The State Bar has agreed to comply with the court’s ruling, according to a statement released Thursday.

“The Supreme Court has identified the issues. Therefore, the State Bar will go back to the trial court to resolve the issues as identified in the opinion,” State Bar President Luis J. Rodriguez said in the statement.

Rachel Moran, dean of the UCLA School of Law, said she was unable to comment for the story.

Sander, whose research was presented in his 2012 book “Mismatch,” argues that affirmative action gives minority students an admissions preference that may eventually be harmful to their academic success.

“I hope that if we get the data and the data confirms our hypotheses, it will draw more attention to the mismatch problem,” Sander said.

Sander said he thinks the preferences allowed by affirmative action sometimes relax academic standards in areas such as standardized testing. Sander added that affirmative action may place insufficiently qualified students in law schools where they will not be prepared to succeed.

“The idea isn’t that students shouldn’t go to law school, but they should go to a law school that’s the right fit for them,” Sander said.

An October 2012 report by Sander claiming that UCLA’s holistic admissions process illegally gave preference to black and Latino applicants was at the center of much controversy last year, prompting student demonstrations and an independent review of the report that disputed its findings.

Sander first researched affirmative action using the Bar Passage Study of 1991. The study tracked students who entered school in 1991 and revealed whether they passed the bar exam.

Though the study listed each student’s school’s tier – a measure of a law school’s quality of education and availability of post-graduate employment opportunities – it did not show the names of the students’ schools, their grades on the exam or their race.

Sander said he is eager to see if the new public information will back up his current theories about affirmative action, and he is pleased the information will be available publicly.

“(The ruling is) a very satisfying victory – not just because of my research or the mismatch issue, but also because of the issue of transparency,” he said.

Compiled by Yael Levin, Bruin senior staff.

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