Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) wants the Federal Trade Commission to open an antitrust investigation into the nation's most elite universities to determine if they illegally coordinated their responses to the Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action.

In a letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, Vance explained that he had sent letters to 10 of the nation's most elite colleges, including the Ivy League, requesting information about how their admissions practices would change in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned colleges and universities from considering an applicant's race in admissions.

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The freshman senator said that none of the colleges he contacted "responded to these queries in good faith" and used strikingly similar language in each response.

"[E]ach school responded with generalized and dismissive statements," the senator wrote. "Reading through the responsive letters, I was struck by their uncanny similarity, both in substance and structure."

To support his claim, Vance said that the letters were almost all sent on the same day, were nearly the same length, used "more or less identical phrasing." and most were signed by a government affairs official, not the addressee.

"It is hard to believe that the schools responding to my letter could achieve such remarkable parallels in the absence of coordination or collusion," Vance wrote. "It would be difficult enough to believe that, acting independently, nine separate colleges and universities would all choose not to respond to my questions substantively, one by one. It is nearly impossible to believe that they would do so using the same structure, vocabulary, tone, and brevity."

The senator urged the commission to investigate the schools for possible "unfair or deceptive acts or [business] practices" and noted that the Federal Trade Commission Act empowers the agency to "conduct wide-ranging studies [with or without] a specific law enforcement purpose."

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"I humbly propose that collusive behavior by colleges and universities, particularly as it relates to new admissions policies adopted in the aftermath of the Harvard College decision, may be a worthy subject for a ... study," Vance wrote. "For example, it is possible that a hub-and-spoke conspiracy model will be adopted in the wake of Harvard College, with the U.S. News & World Report college rankings serving as the hub."

The Washington Examiner has reached out to the FTC for comment.