On July 24, 2024, at a campaign rally, former U.S. President Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic frontrunner for president, on her lawyer credentials. Trump claimed she was a "lousy student" and "couldn't pass her bar exams."
A number of posts on X discussed Harris' credentials, questioning why she became a prosecutor and later attorney general of California after having failed her bar exam.
Harris did fail the California bar exam on her first attempt but she later passed and was admitted to the California bar in 1990, just a year after she graduated. As such, we rate this claim as "True" with added context.
The bar exam is a qualifying written exam administered by a jurisdiction for lawyers to practice law in that particular state.
According to a 2016 New York Times profile of Harris about her Senate campaign, she did fail the bar exam on her first try. Harris described consoling a recent law graduate who did not make it either: "[Harris] failed the bar exam the first time she took it. Harris says she recently consoled a young law graduate who also didn't pass; 'I told her, it's not a measure of your capacity.'"
Harris was admitted to the bar in June 1990 according to the State Bar of California records. She graduated from the University of California Hastings school of law in 1989.
The California bar exam has been described as notoriously difficult. According to the Los Angeles Times there was an only 41.8% pass rate in 1985. In July 1989, according to the Los Angeles Times, 59.5% of people passed and won the right to practice law from the July 1989 exams, and the pass rate was 72.2% among the 4,909 people taking the exam for the first time. In February 1990, the likely date Harris took the bar exam for a second time, the pass rate was 45.9%.
Only 33.9% of people passed the February 2024 general bar exam.