California’s state assembly voted unanimously on Tuesday to pass a bill that would ban legacy preferences in admissions at public and private colleges in the state. The bill will advance to a Senate vote in the next few weeks.
If the bill is signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, California would become the second state to ban legacy admissions at both public and private institutions, following a Maryland law passed earlier this month. It would also be the fourth state to ban the practice at public colleges, after Colorado and Virginia. The law would prohibit institutions such as the University of Southern California and Stanford University, which both admit high proportions of legacy students, from continuing the practice; in 2022, Stanford’s class was over 13 percent legacy and USC’s was 14 percent.
The California bill was one of many legislative attacks on alumni preferences to emerge after last June’s Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action, which unleashed a wave of public criticism of the practice.
This is the second bill targeting legacy preferences to pass California’s assembly in five years. In 2019, lawmakers proposed a legacy ban bill in the wake of the Varsity Blues scandal, but after facing fierce opposition from higher ed lobbying groups, it was watered down to require only that colleges publicly disclose their legacy demographics.
In Connecticut, hopes for a similar across-the-board legacy ban were dashed earlier this month when the state Senate amended it to a transparency mandate modeled on the one currently in place in California.
Liam Knox
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