Taking two different approaches with the same goal, California law school deans and more than 100 alumni have asked the state Supreme Court to make the newly lowered passing score on the bar exam retroactive.

Nineteen deans submitted a letter to the high court Thursday night asking that the "cut" score of 139, lowered by the Supreme Court from 144 last week, extend to graduates who sat for the February 2020 exam. The pass rate for that test sunk to a historic low of 26.8%.

The deans, representing ABA-accredited schools in California, say they all know students who scored somewhere between 139 and just under 144 and "but for the moment" failed the February test.

"Yet these students are being double-penalized, both by the score not applying to the February exam and by the fact that they, and only they, will have achieved that now-passing score and yet must wait several additional months beyond the usual timing of the regularly scheduled exam for a new exam and that exam's results," the deans wrote.

The retroactive change would mean an additional 376 test-takers passed, according to the state bar.

In a separate petition, the law school graduates asked the court to make the score retroactive to anyone who sat for the exam between July 2017 and February 2020. July 2017 was the first time the exam was administered over two days instead of three.

"This was a substantial change in the exams being administered and in theory, all subsequent exams, all things considered, would be on equal footing," the alumni wrote.

Supreme Court officials were trying to determine Friday whether the petition, submitted on line-numbered legal paper, was intended as a formal filing with the court or a more informal request. It does not state a specific claim.

The court did not have an immediate response to both groups' correspondence. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Associate Justice Ming Chin were attending a Judicial Council meeting Friday morning.

Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Chief Justice of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye, chief justice of California. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM

The court's July 16 decision to permanently roll back the cut score stunned law school deans, lawmakers and students who had pleaded with the justices for years to lower what was then the second-highest-in-the-nation passing figure. The court did not explain its decision other than to cite a study that showed a 139 score on the exam is a statistically sound deviation from 144.

Lawmakers, citing the exam's low pass rate and the resulting disparate impact on minorities trying to join the bar, had pressed the court in June to lower the score to just below 139.

The deans' letter was shepherded by UC Hastings professor Richard Zitrin, an expert in legal ethics.

"I'm deeply concerned by the fundamental unfairness to students of color, including some known to me, who scored over 140 on the February 2020 bar and must now take the exam once again," Zitrin said in a statement published in a UC Hastings statement on the letter.