“We’ve been in ongoing contact with [the federal government] since,” Oren Sellstrom, litigation director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, tells Teen Vogue, “so we know that they are actively investigating the matter. No conclusion has been reached to date, however.”
Sellstrom calls the California legislation “one more step in the right direction” of banning legacy and donor admissions as “unfair and undeserved.” Stanford University and University of Southern California are two highly selective universities that will be impacted by the new law, which will take effect in September 2025. Roughly 14% of the universities’ 2023 and 2024 entering classes were legacy students, according to the latest available data.
Valerie Johnson, the legislative affairs manager of the Campaign for College Opportunity, which helped push the California bill, says, “Our young population is hugely diverse. When they’re able to go to college, they don’t just represent themselves. This bill is opening doors for them, for their families, for their communities, and that’s something I’m personally excited about as an impact of our work.”
Legislators in other states are hopeful that California’s decision will galvanize the movement against legacy preferences elsewhere. Democratic senator Andrew Gounardes of New York is a sponsor of a bill that would end legacy admissions in his state. “New York has, by our account, the greatest number of exclusionary college admissions practices,” Senator Gounardes tells Teen Vogue. “Seeing California take this step is helpful to our cause.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has been in talks with organizations in California, such as the Campaign for College Opportunity, in hopes of replicating their legislative success. Jake Martinez, deputy director for campaigns and strategy of the Education Policy Center at NYCLU, says public outrage is growing as the consequences of affirmative action’s demise become clear. “People are outraged by this and they want to do something about it,” he tells Teen Vogue. “And the way to do that is to eliminate these unfair practices like legacy admissions, which are counterproductive to ensuring we have these diverse classes.”
At Cornell University, student Jonathan Lam is working with the NYCLU to advocate for the Fair College Admissions bill by educating other students and lobbying legislators. “What’s made this bill very different in comparison to a lot of other state legislation is that our bill has a penalty,” Lam explains. “If schools continue to use legacy admissions, a certain percentage of their finances would go into the TAP program, which is a tuition assistance program that would mostly help low-income students be able to attend college.”
