A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from forcing public universities in 17 plaintiff states to hand over sweeping admissions data tied to race and sex. The ruling is not a final defeat for the administration, but it halts one of its most aggressive post-affirmative action enforcement moves while the case moves forward.
The dispute matters because the Education Department was not asking for a minor update to an existing survey. It was asking colleges to assemble years of detailed admissions data on applicants, admitted students and enrolled students under a compressed timeline, then submit it through a new federal reporting process. For colleges already managing dense compliance obligations, the order promised a scramble. For the states that sued, it looked like a rushed attempt to expand federal oversight before the system behind it was fully ready.
What the administration ordered
The policy at the center of the case grew out of President Donald Trump’s August 2025 memorandum, which directed the Secretary of Education to expand federal higher education reporting within 120 days so the government could better assess whether colleges were still using race in admissions after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action. The administration said greater transparency was necessary because universities could still be relying on essays, “diversity statements” or other proxies even if they no longer openly used race as a factor.
To carry that out, the Department of Education moved to add the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS, to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, better known as IPEDS. The August Federal Register notice launched the comment process, and NCES later said the ACTS component would open in the winter 2025-26 reporting cycle with a March 18, 2026, deadline for keyholders. A February NCES update confirmed the same deadline and said coordinators had until April 1.
The April 3 memorandum order shows how broad the survey had become by the time it reached the judge. According to U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, ACTS required reporting on race, ethnicity, gender, family income, parental education and other demographic factors, along with admission test scores and grade point averages, for applicants, admitted students and enrolled students at both the undergraduate and graduate level, for the current year and the preceding six years.
While the administration framed the new reporting as a civil rights and transparency measure, institutions that participate in federal aid programs are generally required to complete IPEDS surveys. Universities saw the mandate as something they could not safely ignore, especially when the White House directive also called for remedial action if schools failed to submit data on time or submitted incomplete or inaccurate information.
Why the judge blocked it
The legal posture has become clearer since the case first reached court. The states sued on March 6, 2026, in federal court in Massachusetts. Judge Saylor first entered a short-term block in March, then on April 3 issued a preliminary injunction for the plaintiff states and their constituent public institutions. Reuters earlier reported on the court’s March 13 temporary restraining order, which bought time before the court addressed the broader request for longer-lasting relief.
A temporary restraining order is an emergency pause. A preliminary injunction is a more developed ruling that generally means the challengers have shown enough merit to preserve the status quo while the case proceeds.
The judge did not say the federal government lacks authority to gather admissions data altogether. He concluded that the central problem was the “rushed and chaotic” way ACTS was rolled out. In the court’s written order, Saylor said NCES failed to engage meaningfully with institutions during notice and comment despite thousands of responses warning about burden, data quality, definitions, timing and privacy. The court drew a line around process, not simply policy preference.
The ruling delivers both a setback and a path forward for the administration. It blocks the government’s immediate demand but leaves open the possibility that officials could try again through a slower administrative route with a stronger record and a less compressed timetable.
Why colleges and states pushed back
The multistate challenge was never just about whether race-related admissions data should exist. It focused on how much data the government demanded, how quickly it wanted it, and whether the system behind the request was ready.
In a December comment letter led by California and joined by other Democratic attorneys general, the states called ACTS an “unnecessary, burdensome data-fishing expedition” that posed risks to student privacy and was unlikely to produce useful results. The filing also said the National Center for Education Statistics’ own materials estimated roughly 200 hours of work for an initial survey response.
The judge’s opinion echoed many of those practical concerns. He pointed to the compressed timeline created by the president’s 120-day directive, the agency’s decision to skip its usual technical review process, and evidence that survey templates were still being revised after data collection had already begun. The order notes that NCES materially changed templates on Jan. 26 and again on Feb. 17, after schools had already begun preparing submissions.
There was also a capacity problem hanging over the effort. The judge noted uncertainty around staffing at the National Center for Education Statistics as the administration pursued broader plans to dismantle the Education Department. That mattered because ACTS was not a routine annual adjustment. It was a new, far more granular data collection layered onto a reporting system colleges already use for federal compliance.
What happens next
For now, the preliminary injunction covers the plaintiff states and their public universities. Other schools are watching closely. Reuters separately reported that the court granted temporary protection to members of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts while broader requests for relief are considered.
The administration still has options. It can appeal. It can continue defending ACTS on the merits. Or it can try to restart the effort through a more traditional rulemaking and paperwork review process, betting a less rushed rollout could survive judicial scrutiny. The current order effectively invites that possibility by recognizing NCES’s underlying authority while faulting its execution.
Colleges now have a clearer signal that courts may not allow the federal government to use IPEDS as a fast-track vehicle for politically urgent policy changes without a robust administrative record. At the same time, the White House has not abandoned its broader push for more admissions transparency. It has instead run into the legal reality that even a federal crackdown must move through the guardrails Congress put in place.
