Days before scheduled LSAT administrations in September, Iranian American pre-law students across Texas and the country found themselves abruptly locked out of their Law School Admission Council accounts — unable to register, unable to access practice materials, and unable to move forward with law school applications they had spent years preparing for. The freeze traced back to a federal sanctions overhaul that swept up far more people than it appeared designed to target.
A Sanctions Shift With Unexpected Fallout
The trouble began on August 24, 2026, when the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control indefinitely suspended Iran General License G, the authorization that had allowed U.S. testing organizations to provide standardized entrance exams and academic services to people in Iran, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control. The action was part of a broader sanctions escalation known as Operation Economic Outcast, which also suspended general licenses covering personal remittances, sports exchanges, and international conference services tied to Iran, with a brief wind-down window that expired September 8. As reported by Chron, which republished reporting originally published by the University of Houston's student newspaper, the Trump administration has said the sanctions against Iran are intended to end what it calls the Iranian threat.
Just one day after that wind-down window closed, LSAC emailed candidates on September 9, 2026, announcing it was prohibited from delivering the LSAT, processing applications, or providing Credential Assembly Service subscriptions to Iranian citizens or residents, according to the ABA Journal. The restriction locked candidates out of their online accounts and practice test materials with almost no warning. Chron's report, drawing on the account of an anonymous Iranian alumnus who was not personally affected because they had not identified as Iranian on their LSAC application, noted that friends who had disclosed their Iranian identity saw their accounts flagged soon after.
Why Dual Citizens Got Swept Into the Filter
The scope of the lockout caught many by surprise because of how Iranian nationality law works. Under Iranian legal statutes, any child born to an Iranian father automatically receives Iranian citizenship by descent regardless of where that child was born, per Military.com. That automatic citizenship rule meant U.S.-born and Canadian-born dual nationals who had lived in North America their entire lives were flagged by automated nationality checks meant to screen for sanctioned individuals.
Legal experts pushed back on the scope of LSAC's response. Analysts at the Sanctions Law Center stated that OFAC sanctions target location or ordinary residence under federal regulation, not citizenship or heritage alone, making LSAC's initial nationality-based ban an instance of corporate overcompliance. University of Houston law professor David Crump said that prohibiting certain citizens from educational services would not be lawful if the reporting was accurate, and argued that a measure specifically targeting Iranian Americans would violate the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The National Iranian American Council challenged LSAC's decision to comply so broadly with the sanctions and wrote a letter urging the organization not to overcomply with restrictions on Iranian citizens' rights.
Advocacy Pressure Forces a Partial Reversal
Representatives Yassamin Ansari and Dave Min sent a congressional letter on September 15 reinforcing concerns about the restrictions. On September 18, LSAC provided written confirmation that it had restored access to affected applicants eligible under federal law, according to PAAIA, which reported the confirmation on September 23. The restrictions apply to people located in Iran or ordinarily resident there; other sanctions-list restrictions may also apply.
Donya Oufi, one of the students affected, said admission to juris doctor or medical doctor programs requires taking the LSAT, underscoring why the account freeze threatened to derail career plans outright. Chron's reporting noted that non-Iranian students interviewed worried the episode could set a precedent allowing government control over a specific community's rights, even as Iranian-American students described facing potential delays to the career plans they had been building toward for years.
Why the Impact Lands Hard in Texas
The stakes are especially concentrated in the Houston area. Harris County is home to 12,375 residents of Iranian ancestry, ranking fifth among the counties listed and making Houston one of the nation's primary hubs for the Iranian diaspora, according to data compiled by Social Explorer. Houston is a prominent center of the Iranian diaspora, with Harris County ranking fifth among the counties listed by Iranian ancestry.
LSAC's centralized role in legal education compounds the stakes for anyone locked out. The organization administers the LSAT and manages the application files, recommendations, and transcript reports required by nearly all ABA-accredited law schools, and a substantial number of those schools accept the GRE instead of the LSAT, as outlined by Yazdi Law. Losing LSAC access can therefore complicate applications to accredited law programs.
The Iranian American Bar Association is one organization in the Iranian American legal community. Regulatory barriers facing minority law school applicants remain a concern as the fallout from the sanctions continues to unfold.
