Big changes are coming to California: On Monday, Sept. 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that bans legacy admissions at private universities.
“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Newsom said in a statement about the ban, per Politico. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we’re opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly.”
Starting Sept. 1, 2025, it will be illegal for both private colleges in California to admit a student based on their connections with university donors or alumni. When the ban comes into effect, California colleges and universities will be expected to report the statistics and demographic information of their admitted classes to the state — a practice that private colleges have been required to do since 2022 — and if legacy admissions are found, institutions will be penalized by being named on the Department of Justice website. The colleges will not be financially penalized, though.
Many major universities within California have already had bans on legacy admissions for decades, including the University of California, the California State University system, and other public California schools. Now, California is the fifth state to officially ban legacy admissions, following Maryland, Illinois, Virginia, and Colorado. However, only California and Maryland ban this practice at both private and public schools; the other three only have the ban for public schools.
This ban is part of a wide-spanning trend of colleges and states rethinking their admissions rules, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to ban race-conscious admissions within colleges in June 2023. Race-conscious admissions — better known as affirmative action — was thought to even the playing field for BIPOC students to get into college, especially elite colleges, which are typically predominantly white.
“If we value diversity in higher education, we must level the playing field,” assemblyman Phil Ting, a San Francisco politician who wrote the bill, said in a statement about the ban. “That means making the college application process more fair and equitable. Hard work, good grades, and a well-rounded background should earn you a spot in the incoming class — not the size of the check your family can write or who you’re related to.”
Although many schools that use legacy admissions practices insist these practices have not compromised their standards for admitting students (per the New York Times), seeing as legacy admissions practices typically favor upper-class, white students, many believe banning the practice will help give students fair chances of attending colleges based on merit. With more states considering similar bans, this is beginning to look like a new wave of admissions policy changes — hopefully for the better.