Two months ago, I highlighted the disturbing news that the Florida Bar’s Business Law Section had established diversity quotas for its Continuing Legal Education programs. As I noted, that meant that Florida lawyers, as a condition of practicing law in the state, are required to be members of an organization that has an overt policy of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and other diverse categories—not including, of course, intellectual or ideological diversity.
I’m very pleased to see that the Florida supreme court has today issued an order that prohibits approval of any CLE course “submitted by a sponsor, including a section of The Florida Bar, that uses quotas based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation in the selection of course faculty or participants.”
(Even the one justice who dissents from the order does so only on the ground that he does “not believe that the enactment of a rule specifically addressing this issue is necessary” and instead “believes that a simple letter directed to the Business Law Section, communicating that such action may be in violation of United States Supreme Court precedent, would have sufficed.”)