Appeals Court Affirms Denial Of Richard Sander's Request To Access California Bar Data To Study Racial Implications Of Bar Passage Rates

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Appeals Court Affirms Denial Of Richard Sander's Request To Access California Bar Data To Study Racial Implications Of Bar Passage Rates

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  the California Court of Appeals on Thursday affirmed the trial court's denial of UCLA Prof Richard Sander's request to access California bar admissions data to study the racial implications of bar passage rates...

Appellants and petitioners Richard Sander and the First Amendment Coalition(Petitioners) challenge the trial court’s denial of their petition for writ of mandate seeking to obtain information from the State Bar of California’s bar admissions database. 

Specifically, Petitioners seek individually unidentifiable records for all applicants to the California Bar Examination from 1972 to 2008 in the following categories: race or ethnicity, law school, transfer status, year of law school graduation, law school and undergraduate GPA, LSAT scores, and performance on the bar examination. 

Making these records available to the public in a manner that protects the applicants’ privacy and anonymity, they believe, will allow researchers to study the potential relationship between preferential admissions programs in higher education and a gap in bar passage rates between racial and ethnic groups..."
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