Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell said a new version of the bar exam may “water down” the test by which examinees become licensed attorneys.

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Mitchell, an associate justice since his 2018 election, wrote that he has “serious concerns” about how the “NextGen” bar exam, scheduled to roll out in 2026, will affect the legal profession.

According to Mitchell, the new test will be “shorter than the current two-day evaluation, test fewer areas of law, and probe each subject less deeply.”

The National Conference of Bar Examiners, according to Reuters, began redeveloping the test two years ago, to place more emphasis on legal skills and deemphasize doctrinal law memorization.

The new test omits questions on family law, estates and trusts, in favor of testing for skill sets such as client counseling. client relationships, legal research, legal writing, and negotiations.

In particular, Mitchell said the new test will put “considerable emphasis on examinees’ race, sex, gender identity, nationality and other identity-based characteristics.”

“The idea seems to be that any differences in group outcomes must be eliminated—even if the only way to achieve this goal is to water down the test,” Mitchell wrote.

He went on to state that an ACLU representative at the NCBE conference argued that states “should minimize or overlook would-be lawyers’ convictions for various criminal offenses in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.”

Mitchell said the NCBE, which administers the bar exam, should disclose the content and scoring of NextGen before the next academic year, to give law schools and students a chance to prepare.

He also argued that states should push for the option to retain the current exam “for at least the next five to 10 years” until they can properly assess the exam’s effectiveness, and insist that the new exam “will be ideologically neutral and blind to race and sex.”

“The bar exam should test the law straight—without respect to ideology and on a race- and sex-blind basis,” Mitchell said.