Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill prohibiting private nonprofit colleges from granting admission advantages to students whose parents donated or attended the same school on Monday.
The law impacts a few private universities that still consider family connections in admissions. USC, Stanford, Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd colleges were among those that still embraced the practice, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work. 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,” Newsom said in a statement.
California State universities and the University of California system don’t practice legacy admissions, the latter having done away with the practice in 1998.
Though California has made legacy and donor admissions illegal, there is no specific punishment for universities violating it, according to the bill’s current text, aside from California’s Department of Justice posting “the names of the independent institutions of higher education that violate the prohibition on its internet website by the next fiscal year.”
An earlier version of the bill would have forced colleges to pay money matching the amount they received in Cal Grant payments if the rules were violated.
Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who authored the bill and spoke with the L.A. Times before Newsom signed it, said the legislation was weaker than initially planned but hoped that lawmakers would build on it in the future.
The issue of legacy admissions attracted renewed opposition after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that race-based affirmative action in college applications is unconstitutional.
California now joins Maryland, Virginia, Illinois and Colorado in banning legacy admissions.
The new law goes into effect Sept. 1, 2025.