California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning legacy admissions and donor preferences at private and nonprofit universities in the state on Sept. 30. The law is set to take effect on Sept. 1, 2025.
The bill, AB 1780, made California the fifth state to enact a ban against colleges granting an advantage to relatives of alumni or institutional donors. The state is the second to apply the ban to private institutions.
“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Newsom said in a press release. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we’re opening up the door for higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly.”
The new law requires private institutions to submit annual reports to the State Legislature and the Department of Justice (DOJ), disclosing their compliance with new regulations. Institutions found in violation of the new law will not be fined, but rather have their names posted on the DOJ website by the next fiscal year.
Among California’s public university systems, the California State University (CSU) already does not consider legacy or donor relations in admissions and the University of California stopped doing so in 1998.
Private universities, such as Stanford University and the University of Southern California (USC), currently consider legacy status for first-year, first-time applicants. USC indicated consideration of alumni relations for admissions in their annual release of the common data set, with 14% of its incoming 2023 class classified as legacy students. In the same cycle, Stanford reported that 13.6% of its incoming class had “some form of existing connection to Stanford” through family or philanthropy.
The effort to address preferential treatment for legacy students garnered renewed interest last year after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College held race-based affirmative action programs to be unconstitutional. Assemblymember Phil Ting of San Francisco spearheaded the California effort, introducing AB 1780 in January 2024, based on his previous bill AB 697 in 2019.
“Because I believe strongly in the value of diversity in higher education, I brought this legislation back in light of the SCOTUS ruling to level the college admissions playing field for our students,” Ting said in a press release.
The first draft of the bill presented to the State Assembly featured strict financial penalties for preferential treatment based on legacy status, disqualifying violating institutions from Cal Grant and Cal Grant Reform Act eligibility. The bill underwent three rounds of amendments before being passed to the State Senate in May.
State Senators kept a majority of the bill’s established framework but removed the financial penalties. They instead added provisions requiring institutions to submit annual reports and the DOJ to post the names of violators. Senators enacted five rounds of amendments before ordering the bill back to the Assembly for conference committee consideration in August. The bill reached Newsom’s desk on Sept. 10.
Private institutions have since issued statements saying they will comply with the law.
“We are always looking to evolve our admissions processes and recruitment efforts to bring as many of these students to USC as we can,” USC said in a statement to the Daily Trojan. “We will do so in compliance with the law.”
Stanford officials noted that the legislation does not take effect until September of next year and that they would “continue to review its admissions policies” during that time in an email to the Stanford Daily.
New University reached out to UCI students regarding the bill’s passing.
“Legacy overall is pretty unfair,” Ryan Falat, second-year urban studies major, said. “All legacy is saying is that, ‘since your parents attended or donated, you should also have the chance to go here,’ and that’s not a fair system.”
First-year economics major Claire Yee, speaking about her experience as a legacy student, expressed optimism for the new law.
“I’m from the Northeast, and there are a few schools there that have banned legacy, and I feel like they’ve done a good job of that because I applied to one where I had double legacy and still got rejected,” Yee told New University.
Other students expressed their concerns about the effectiveness of the legacy ban.
“The idea would make [admissions] more fair,” first-year public health policy major Paige Trinh said. “In human practice though, there might still be biases there.”
The Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, representing over 85 colleges across the state, expressed opposition to the bill in its development. Kristen Soares, president of the association, told the Los Angeles Times its members were “uncomfortable with the state dictating admission practices,” but that they “welcome the opportunity to help ensure people have confidence in an admission process that is equitable for all.”
Additional California universities that will be impacted by the new law include Santa Clara University, Harvey Mudd College and Claremont McKenna College.
Kian Momeny is a News Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. He can be reached at kmomeny@uci.edu.