A federal judge in Boston granted a preliminary injunction Friday blocking the Trump administration from enforcing a new requirement that public universities submit detailed admissions data to show they are not considering race, after a lawsuit brought by 17 Democratic state attorneys general.
U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV on Friday granted a preliminary injunction halting the Trump administration’s effort to require colleges to submit data intended to demonstrate that race is not being considered in admissions.
The injunction applies only to public universities in the 17 states that sued, according to reporting by The Associated Press.
In his ruling, Saylor said the federal government likely has the authority to collect the information, but faulted how the requirement was rolled out. He described the rollout as “rushed and chaotic” and wrote that the administration’s 120-day deadline contributed to the National Center for Education Statistics’ failure to “engage meaningfully” with institutions during the notice-and-comment process.
President Donald Trump ordered the new data collection in August, citing concerns that colleges were using application essays and other “proxies” to take race into account despite the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision barring race-based affirmative action in admissions.
The 17 states argued the federal demand risked invading student privacy, could prompt baseless investigations, and gave universities too little time to gather and report the requested information. Michelle Pascucci, a lawyer for the states, told the court the data was being sought “in such a hasty and irresponsible way” that it would create problems for universities.
The Education Department defended the effort by arguing that taxpayers deserve transparency about how institutions receiving federal funds operate.
The injunction is the latest legal setback for the administration’s broader campaign targeting admissions practices at selective universities. The administration has also sued Harvard University over admissions-record requests, and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights recently directed Harvard to comply with the requests within 20 days, the AP reported.
Separately, the administration has pointed to previous agreements involving Brown University and Columbia University that included commitments to provide admissions-related data for federal review, though the precise scope of those agreements and the extent to which they mirror the broader data-collection requirement have not been uniformly described across public documents and coverage.
