A civil rights organization has threatened to sue the State Bar of California over the use of facial recognition technology on its online bar exam.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on Wednesday sent a letter to bar leaders and the chief executive officer of online test platform ExamSoft, urging them to drop the facial recognition aspect of the upcoming February exam and make it open book. Alternatively, California should consider an emergency diploma privilege. Facial recognition technology, which was used on the first-ever national remote bar exam in October to verify the identities of test takers and monitor for potential cheating, is discriminatory because the technology is less effective on women and nonwhite test takers, the letter argues.