Federal Complaint Says Harvard Legacy Preferences Violate Civil Rights Act

Why not both? Accept federal funds and increase class size by the # of legacy admits. This is the obvious solution if there’s an impasse with the government. Want to accept another legacy student? Then take in one more student on merit. The government has a lot of leverage and I’m surprised they haven’t forced larger class sizes at top universities.

I also ANAL, but as far as I can discern I believe the argument is that "race-neutral" admissions are incompatible with giving favorable treatment to a racially biased group, and legacy students are (presently) a racially biased group. It fundamentally is an attempt to force the court to decide whether the mandate of "race neutrality" is anything more than a fig leaf: if you can be "race neutral" while giving preferential treatment to racially biased groups, it is very easy to follow the rule while still producing a racially biased and non-meritocratic system.

It's not the DoJ filing the lawsuit, so no.