Harvard Law School’s incoming class saw a notable shift this year, with the percentage of students of color dropping from 51% to 43%. This decrease, detailed in new data, follows last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning race-conscious admissions policies, a decision resulting from cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
The ruling has sparked widespread concerns about its impact on diversity, particularly within prestigious institutions like Harvard Law, where efforts to foster a more inclusive legal profession could be at risk. Although Harvard Law’s data does not specify which minority groups have been most affected, the overall drop equates to about 45 fewer non-white students in this year’s class of 560—a stark contrast to previous highs.
The broader implications of the affirmative action ban are being felt across other elite schools as well. Harvard University reported a significant reduction in Black students, whose representation in its freshman class fell by more than 20%, while MIT saw the percentage of Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander students in its incoming class drop dramatically.
Other top law schools, such as the University of California, Berkeley, have also experienced declines in diversity, despite being under state-mandated affirmative action bans for decades. Berkeley’s percentage of students of color fell from 57% to 50% this year.
As more schools disclose their diversity statistics, the legal industry is grappling with what these changes mean for the future of representation and equity in the profession. The American Bar Association is expected to release more detailed, race-specific enrollment data later this year.
