This has nothing to do with liberal courts but rather the differing legal strategies that would needed. In the California case you have state court instructing a state school system to not considered the MCAT as it puts a “class” of people (disabled) at disadvantage. This ruling impacts the admitting schools directly.
a Federal case against AAMC would be different. Medical schools would not be a party to the case and there would be no basis to order them en masse to not consider the MCAT. Additionally, if the case was based on violation of ADA, the redress would be to make sure that accommodation is made for these individuals; it would not be cancel MCAT administration as this would possibly lead to putting those who have not yet taken the exam at a disadvantage against those who have already taken the exam at schools where the MCAT is still being used for admissions. In other words, you dont provide relief to one class by creating a new class of people who now may be at disadvantage
Agreed! My reading of the CA case (at least from the article) was that the disabled were disadvantaged because they weren't able to receive accommodations for the SAT, so the court threw the SAT out. The court didn't get involved in trying to order the testing accommodation. They observed that the accommodation wasn't made, and decided the preferable remedy was to throw the test out rather than trying to tell the SAT people how to run their test.
You are correct -- AAMC is making accommodations, so there would be no basis to throw the MCAT out. Period. On the other hand, if the same thing were happening with the MCAT as happened with the SAT, you'd have the same result, at least in CA, and probably nationally, since the ADA is a federal law. I don't know enough about the law to know whether the federal government could bring the case against AAMC and impose its will on the schools through AAMC, which after all, is an association of medical schools, or whether they'd have to go through each school individually, but the point is moot because AAMC spotted the potential issue and acted preemptively to avoid it.
I know AAMC today takes the position that it is just a platform, like Facebook or eBay. But guess what? Facebook is starting to learn it might very well have liability for content posted by its users!!
All MD schools are members of AAMC. AAMC provides the MCAT, the application platform, the CYMS reporting tool, and coordinates just fine when it wants to. It could certainly impose a requirement on its member schools if ordered to do so by a federal court. If not, a federal court could probably just issue an injunction against all the schools just like the CA court did.
It's not like there are a million schools. Forget class action -- the government would just have to name the 150 schools as defendants and go get its injunction! Again, not going to happen because there is no basis, but it could if there were.
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