California just took the biggest shot yet against legacy admissions

Newsom signed the legislation on Monday; legacy admissions (and any special consideration for well-connected applicants) will be abolished starting fall 2025. Every private college and university in the state will be required to turn in an annual report proving its compliance.

Newsom’s move comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning Affirmative Action, the law that mandated race considerations in college applications. Following the strikedown, class profiles have shifted dramatically and more universities have revisited their own admissions practices.

Legacy admissions have been banned for several years within the California State University system and the University of California system. Only with Newsom’s order have the tonier private schools been given the directive to join suit.

“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Newsom wrote. “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.” 

“If we value diversity in higher education, we must level the playing field,” California State Rep. Phil Ting, a Democratic assemblyman in San Francisco and the bill’s author, added. “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.”

Maryland is the only other state that’s banned legacy admissions at private colleges; Colorado, Virginia, and Illinois have banned legacy admissions at public universities. 

In a memo to The Stanford Daily, the school’s newspaper, university leadership said Newsom’s legislation won’t kick in until next year’s admissions cycle, and in the meantime, “Stanford will continue to review its admissions policies.” The school didn’t respond to its newspaper’s questions “about whether Stanford would comply with the bill nor how the University would adjust its admissions policies.”

“With the Supreme Court outlawing affirmative action and not allowing any university within the United States to look at race as a factor in admissions, this completely kept open the door that wealth could be a factor in admissions,” Ting told The Stanford Daily. “Even when you have equal schools, grades and extracurriculars, the person with the greater wealth is twice as likely to get into a Stanford or an Ivy League school as anyone else.”

For its part, USC told The Daily Trojan that its acceptance process is holistic and considers all facets of each student. Every admitted student meets its “high academic standards”—legacy or not. “We are fortunate that USC remains a top destination for so many accomplished students…and we are always looking to evolve our admissions processes and recruitment efforts…in compliance with the law.”

Getting a leg up is a widely unpopular practice. A landmark 2022 Pew Research survey found three in four Americans believe legacy or donor relations have no place in university admissions. Just over 16% of Stanford’s Class of 2023 were the children of Stanford grads, the school reported in 2020. A similar share of students admitted to USC in 2022—14%—were legacies, or “scions,” as the school called them.  

The legislation means the scions in the 2026 freshman classes at Stanford and USC are likely to be noticeably fewer and farther between.