Judge Extends Deadline for Submitting Admissions Data

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from requiring colleges and universities to collect and report admissions data disaggregated by race and gender, Reuters reported.

The temporary restraining order, issued by U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor IV in Boston, comes in response to a lawsuit filed last week by 17 Democratic states over the administration’s demand that colleges and universities complete the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement survey by March 18. Saylor’s order extends the deadline through March 25 “to permit a hearing and orderly resolution of the issues.”

The ACTS survey—a new component of the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—requires colleges to collect extensive admissions data on test scores, grade point averages, race, sex and income ranges of applied, admitted and enrolled students going back as far as 2019. The aim is to confirm that institutions are complying with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning the consideration of race in admissions decisions.

But the 17 state attorneys general who filed the lawsuit argued that the demand is unlawful. ACTS aims to transform IPEDS “from a reliable tool for methodical statistical reporting to a mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims,” they wrote.

They added that the scope and time frame of collecting such data places “a considerable burden” on institutions and could subject them to “costly investigations based on unreliable data.”