The Southern California Institute of Law is claiming that the First Amendment will protect their right to not disclose what percentage of their graduates pass the state bar exam. The SC Institute of Law is suing the bar association in its requirement that it advertise its bar passage rate on its school’s website, where that rate is viewable to all prospective students. The school filed a federal lawsuit and claimed that the bar association’s requirement infringes on speech rights. Their specific claim is that the bar’s requirement “forces them to endorse the notion that a school’s exam passage rate reflects the quality of its legal education. SCIL thinks one has nothing to do with the other,” according to the WSJ.
So clearly prospective students do have some concerns over the bar passage rate of the school, whether unjustified or not. Students may assume that if a school’s bar passage rate is poor that the school is not that great. Though that may not be correct, students may use the bar passage rate as a proxy for quality of the school, or at least of the quality of its legal education.
The school commented that [the bar] has no right to foist their ideology onto SCIL and compel it to refer or disclose bar passage rates of its graduates.