"This move was ill-advised, ill-considered, possibly illegal, and in essence just all kinds of wrong," Fraser Heston states.

Fraser Heston has responded to an email from the Academy with a rebuke that invokes father Charlton Heston's presidency of the Screen Actors Guild and his marching with Dr. Martin Luther King.

"I cannot begin to tell you with what consternation I received this missive. But I will try," Heston writes in a letter to Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and the Board of Governors.

The "missive" Heston refers to is an email sent to Academy members informing them that, in an effort to diversify its ranks, the voting status of members will be revoked if they are not "active in motion pictures" during a decade.

The Academy's move is a response to criticism that, for a second straight year, all white actors were nominated in the four acting categories. While some praised the Academy's new rules, others accuse it of presuming that its older, white members are taking skin color into account when voting.

Fraser Heston, a voting member of the Directors Branch of the Academy, says the term "inactive" is "disturbingly Orwellian," according to his letter, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.