West Bloomfield Resident Sues American Bar on Charges of Discrimination

Attorney Richard Bernstein filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division on behalf of Angelo Binno, 28, of West Bloomfield, who claims that the Law School Admission Test is "inherently discriminatory."

By Timothy Rath
May 26, 2011

A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday against the American Bar Association on behalf of a West Bloomfield resident, claiming that requiring blind or visually impaired law school applicants to take the “inherently discriminatory” Law School Admission Test is a violation of their civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Attorney Richard Bernstein, who said he was the last student admitted to a law school in 1996 without taking the LSAT, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division on behalf of Angelo Binno, 28.

Bernstein called Binno “the best type of potential lawyer.” A 2000 graduate of West Bloomfield High School who also went to Doherty Elementary School and Orchard Lake Middle School, Binno graduated in just three years prior to moving on to Wayne State University and working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Binno said he first became interested in working as a lawyer while working on 48th District Court Judge Diane D’Agostini’s campaign in a losing effort in 1996; he also worked on her successful 2000 campaign. Binno also was involved in the cultural awareness program United We Walk at WBHS. Bernstein believes that Binno's wide range of experiences would help him achieve his dream of working as a civil rights attorney if he hadn’t scored poorly on the LSAT.

“The best lawyers are the ones who empathize, understand and relate to challenge,” said Bernstein, who lives in Birmingham and works in Farmington Hills.

“If you go back and look at the personal statements of law school applicants, you’ll find that every statement talks about how they want to change the world," Bernstein said. "A future attorney like Binno, who represents two minority populations (including his ethnicity and his disability) is the only kind who really will, due to his personal experience.”

Binno agreed. “I’ve always been at a disadvantage due to my disability, but you work with what you have. I’ve worked with what I have here, and it’s not working," he said. "It’s been my dream ever since I was a kid to be an attorney, so I want to make it right for current kids.”

LSAT asks all testees to draw diagrams, 'impossible' for the blind

Bernstein said filing in a federal court was “the last resort” in a situation that has been ongoing since ’96. The LSAT tells testees “it may be useful to draw a rough diagram” to answer 23 questions in the logic games section of the three-part exam, which Binno describes as “impossible” for the blind.

A high LSAT score is considered to be the most important factor in being admitted to law school. According to Bernstein, if a law school were to waive the requirement, the ABA would threaten that institution with removing its accreditation as a law school, as a result of a lobbying effort by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC). The ABA and the LSAC are private entities.

Bernstein, a noted civil rights attorney, was told as a blind applicant in a May 25, 1995, letter from the LSAC that he should seek an LSAT waiver as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. He eventually graduated from Northwestern University with his law degree in 1999.

“That letter was sent to me by mistake,” Bernstein claims. “The people who administer the test are completely aware of the fact that this exam is inappropriate for a blind person.”

Why now? On April 26, the United States Department of Justice settled two suits involving the accessibility for the LSAC’s online application service for blind applicants. According to Bernstein, the combination of those suits in addition to his letter and Binno’s struggles creates a “climax” to the “ongoing fight” for accessibility.

“We’ve done everything we can, and we intend to show the federal judge that we’ve exhausted our remedies,” Bernstein said. “Binno has worked through the system and found it’s broken. He wants to fix it.”