Enyart v. National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)

In January of 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court granted Stephanie Enyart, a blind law school graduate, the right to use assistive technology to take the Multistate Bar Exam and the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. The court issued a landmark ruling that established that testing entities are required to provide accommodations that best ensure exams measure a test-taker’s ability rather than the impacts of a test-taker’s disability.

Already, we are beginning to see the ruling’s impact. In a similar case, Elder v. National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), the court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the NCBE to allow Mr. Elder, a blind test-taker to take the Multistate Bar Exam with similar assistive technology (JAWS).

This groundbreaking ruling has the potential to have a ripple effect by opening previously closed doors to all kinds of professions to people with many types of disabilities who rely on computers and assistive technology to read.

DRA co-counseled the case with Dan Goldstein of Brown, Goldstein, & Levy and Attorney Scott LaBarre of LaBarre Law Offices.