New Accreditation Bill Bans Race and Gender Requirements, Gives Colleges Power to Sue Oversight Agencies

The aptly named Fairness in Higher Education Accreditation Act aims to fundamentally change how colleges are overseen by the groups that certify their quality. If you’re paying tuition or relying on a degree to get a job, this bill is a major shift in who decides what makes a university legitimate.

The Fine Print on Diversity and Oversight

This legislation takes aim at the accrediting agencies—the non-profit groups that review colleges and make sure they meet basic standards for federal funding (like student loans). Under Section 2, the bill bans these agencies from using the racial, gender, or national origin makeup of a school’s students, faculty, or staff when making accreditation decisions. Translation: If an accreditor currently requires a college to meet certain diversity metrics to prove it’s a quality institution, this bill says they can’t do that anymore. Furthermore, the bill mandates that accreditors must allow any school they oversee to adopt any lawful policy regarding these demographic factors. This means if a school wants to implement a policy that affects the composition of its student body or hiring practices, the accreditor can’t use its oversight power to challenge it, provided the policy is technically legal.

For students, this could mean that institutional commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—which often influence everything from mental health services to curriculum—could lose a crucial layer of external enforcement. If you’re relying on your university to maintain a diverse learning environment, this bill removes the accreditor’s ability to compel the school to do so.

Defining 'Free Inquiry' (and Who Gets a Pass)

Section 2 also introduces new rules around “free inquiry” and academic freedom that accreditors must enforce. For public colleges, “free inquiry” is defined as adherence to the First Amendment (free speech, religion, etc.) and the school’s own written policies. For private colleges, it’s simply defined by their own written rules on speech and association. This is a big deal because it essentially allows private institutions to set their own goalposts for academic freedom. If your private university has a restrictive policy on campus speech, the accreditor is now required to accept that policy, provided it’s written down.

However, the bill carves out a remarkably broad set of exemptions for religious institutions. Schools can bypass these new “free inquiry” rules if they are divinity schools, require faculty/students to belong to a specific religion, or even if their mission statement is simply based on religious beliefs. This wide net ensures that many faith-based institutions retain maximum autonomy, allowing them to maintain practices that might otherwise conflict with the new free inquiry standards.

The New Legal Hammer

Perhaps the most significant change for the power dynamic between schools and their overseers is found in Section 3. This section grants colleges a specific, powerful legal tool: the ability to sue their accrediting agency. If a college is facing the denial or termination of its accreditation, and it believes the accreditor violated the new demographic neutrality rules set out in Section 2, the school can challenge that decision in court. This provision shifts a lot of power away from the regulatory bodies and toward the institutions they are supposed to regulate. It creates a clear path for schools to tie up oversight decisions in litigation, potentially chilling the accreditors’ willingness to enforce standards, especially those that might touch upon sensitive demographic policies.