Legacy Admissions and Tax Exemption
From an interesting Bloomberg Tax (subscription required) article:
The constitutionality of legacy admissions policies has only been litigated once in federal court. The US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina determined in Rosenstock v. The Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina that the university’s legacy admissions policy neither violated the Equal Protection Clause nor violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause, but critics argue that Rosenstock is “neither binding nor persuasive to future courts.”
Studies indicate that legacy and donor policies disproportionately benefit white applicants and systematically disadvantage minority students by perpetuating patterns of racial and social discrimination. Accordingly, federal courts might find that legacy preferences have a disparate impact on people of color in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Alternatively, federal courts might apply strict scrutiny, which is the standard of review that is least deferential to the challenged policy, rather than rational basis scrutiny, which is the standard of review that is most deferential to the challenged policy, to determine that legacy preferences violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
A bill in Massachusetts would tax Harvard and other private schools that make legacy admissions. I am just not sure if I really care. Because I don’t know about drawing parallel lines between segregated education and legacy admissions. Seems to unnecessarily trivialize one and unnecessarily elevate the other. But I need to be better educated about legacy admissions. I might even be a legacy beneficiary. To this day, for example, I have a suspicion that I was awarded an Army ROTC scholarship as an undergraduate because my dad was career Army. They must have thought I was a better candidate for a 20 year career because of my father. I mean, my test scores were above average, but certainly not spectacular and my grades . . . well, I went through some growing pains in high school lets just say. And there are legacy admits in Hollywood — Bridget, Jane, Peter and Henry Fonda— every sports league — Marty and Brian Shottenheimer, for example — and all sorts of private businesses. Everywhere children follow parents and get an advantage for doing so. And isn’t Jeff Kahn at FSU the son and therefore legacy-admitted (to the profession, I mean) son of the late great tax scholar Doug Kahn at Michigan?
Legacy admits present a fairness problem, but I am not sure legislating against it now isn’t just an attempt at payback. If it is, it just seems pathetic and hardly responsive to the harm and insult caused by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
darryll k. jones