THE Supreme Court has directed the Legal Education Board to file its comment on the petition seeking to stop the implementation of the Philippine Law School Admission Test (PhilSAT).
During its en banc session on Tuesday, the SC resolved to require the LEB through its chairman Emerson Aquende to answer the plea of retired Makati City court judge Oscar Pimentel.
Pimentel is currently a member of the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Civil Law and a lecturer in the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education.
“The Court directed respondents to comment within 10 days from receipt of the petition for prohibition with prayer for the issuance of a temporary restraining order dated April 6, 2017,” SC spokesperson Theodore Te told a media briefing.
Aside from Aquende, also named as respondent in the petition is LEB member Zenaida Elepano.
In his petition, Pimentel asked the SC to issue a temporary restraining order as he challenged the constitutionality of Republic Act 7662 or the Legal Education Reform Act of 1993 and sought to restrain the implementation of LEB Memorandum Order No. 7 Series of 2016, which scheduled the conduct of the PhilSAT on April 16 in several cities in the country.
The assailed memorandum provides that starting next academic year, aspiring law students will be required to take the PhilSAT before they can be admitted to any law school.
The LEB said schools would not be allowed to enroll students who did not take the PhilSAT and that if they failed to comply, they would be subject to possible sanctions, including the payment of fine of up to P10,000.
However, the memorandum still allows the schools to ask aspiring law students to take complementary exams such as to test the ability to write in English through an essay or conduct a panel interview if they want so as not to curtail their academic freedom.
The memorandum though said that honor graduates granted professional civil service eligibility, who are enrolling within two years from their college graduation, are exempted from taking the PhilSAT and instead will have to submit a civil service recognition to the LEB.