Legacy admissions are facing renewed attacks – including a new legal complaint – in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. 

Just days after the Court’s ruling, advocacy groups filed a Title VI complaint with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Education, alleging that Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy, which favors children of alumni and donors, discriminates against minority students. Specifically, the complaint states that Harvard’s legacy policy, though race-neutral on its face, provides an advantage to white students and therefore has a disparate, or discriminatory, impact on minority students.

Notably, the complaint was filed with OCR rather than in the federal courts. This move is likely because although OCR has the legal authority to investigate Title VI disparate impact claims, a decades-old Supreme Court case precludes private individuals from filing such claims in federal court. Instead, individuals can sue in federal court only when alleging intentional discrimination under Title VI, a much higher legal standard to meet. As a result, filing an OCR complaint is currently the only avenue available to challenge legacy policies on the basis of disparate impact.

Legacy admissions have been subject to increasing criticism in recent years amidst claims that such policies favor wealthy students and harm equity. Legislation to limit or ban legacy admissions has been introduced in multiple states and passed in at least one, and a bill to ban such practices was introduced in Congress for the first time last year. Meanwhile, a number of institutions have voluntarily abandoned the practice in recent years.