Virginia became the second state to ban legacy admissions at public colleges after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a measure on March 8 that had cleared the state legislature unanimously this year.
The law focuses solely on public schools. Two of the most selective institutions in the commonwealth—the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary—are public.
Under Bipartisan Fire
The Democrat-led legislative effort followed last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to declare “race-conscious” admissions, or affirmative action, unconstitutional.The landmark decision kickstarted a nationwide conversation about all the factors that schools consider when evaluating candidates, including special treatment for children of alumni or those with connections to influential donors or faculty members.
“It’s about fairness. It’s about higher ed being available to everybody,” state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, the Democrat who sponsored the bill, said in January before the upper chamber vote.
That message is echoed by Republicans such as state Attorney General Jason Miyares, who called out the apparent hypocrisy in the colleges’ argument that the high court’s affirmative action ruling would harm the chances for students from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds.
“Higher education systems claim to genuinely care about diversifying their student body population to reflect their states and communities. If that were the case, the archaic legacy system wouldn’t exist,” he argued.
“It isn’t to say that legacy students are unqualified, but students’ applications should be judged on what they can control: their course load, grades, and extracurriculars—not the color of their skin or their parents’ choice of school.”
Before the new law, some Virginia universities had already enacted changes to their admissions policies concerning legacy status.
Anti-Legacy Movement
Legacy admissions have come under increased scrutiny with the Supreme Court ruling, which rekindled a decades-old legislative debate and allowed defeated proposals to be reconsidered in Congress and state legislatures.The Maryland House of Delegates on Feb. 19 approved a proposal that would ban legacy preferences in admissions for all colleges that receive state funding, both public and private. The bill is now with the state Senate.
“With this legislation, we end an unfair practice that benefits a select number of students over those less privileged and connected,” Del. Jazz Lewis, the Democrat carrying the bill, wrote on X.
Similar bills have been introduced in California, Massachusetts, and New York. In July 2023, a prominent association representing New York’s private colleges and universities said it would no longer oppose a bill prohibiting legacy admissions.
“Legacy admission has been an important recruitment tool for some New York colleges,” wrote the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, which lobbies for private New York institutions such as Columbia and Cornell.
“[But] we recognize the public’s perception that the practice also has the effect of expanding privilege instead of opportunity.”
There is also a bipartisan national effort underway to ban the practice.
In December 2023, Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced an amendment to the Higher Education Act that would prohibit colleges from giving preferential treatment in admissions based on the applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors.
