Is the ABA Ordering Law Schools to Break the Law?

Perhaps. A piece in today's online edition of the Wall Street Journal, available here, details a new American Bar Association missive called Standard 211. Enacted by the ABA's Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Standard 211 allows, among other things, law schools to take race and ethnicity into account in the admissions process in order to promote "diversity and equal opportunity." Whatever the merits of that, it's hardly stunning that the ABA would take such a position. However, an "interpretation" of Standard 211 written by the ABA contains this gem:

[T]he requirements of a constitutional provision or statute that purports to prohibit consideration of gender, race, ethnicity or national origin in admissions or employment decisions is not a justification for a school's non-compliance with Standard 211.

There might be some uber-parsed way to interpret that language as something other than a directive to law schools to disregard the law, but I'm not seeing it at the moment.

Update: I can't find the actual full text of the new standards on the web yet. In retrospect, I probably should have reserved comment until that was possible.