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Tens of thousands of people are involuntarily confined in a hospital each year in connection with their mental illness or disability. In response to misconduct by people who are civilly committed, hospitals often call the police, setting in motion a chain of events with devastating consequences for the person who is transferred to criminal custody. Despite the frequency with which it occurs, little research has explored this phenomenon. This Note aims to shed light on the practice and expose its tension with constitutional norms, using the Court’s decisions in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson and Robinson v. California as points of departure.

For nearly a century, the American Bar Association (ABA) has overseen the standards governing accredited law schools, which in turn constitute the primary pathway to the practice of law in the United States. ABA Standard 503 requires that all such schools use a “valid and reliable” examination to assess candidates for admission. Currently, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is the only examination that the ABA has officially recognized as satisfying the standard. However, the LSAT—now approaching its eightieth year—has strayed far from the purposes it was originally designed to serve. Once a simple tool to aid in the assessment of diverse applicants, it has in recent decades become a significant barrier to entry with disparate negative impacts on women, racial minorities, individuals of low socioeconomic status, and, perhaps most egregiously, those with disabilities. This Note argues that Standard 503 should be rescinded. Such a step is necessary both to stimulate innovation in law school admissions and to fulfill the ABA’s mandate of promoting diversity in the legal profession and serving the larger public good.