Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration Data Collection From Public Universities on Admissions

A George W. Bush appointee on Friday halted the Trump administration's effort to force public universities to hand over up to seven years of retroactive admissions data, finding the rollout was "rushed and chaotic" in violation of federal rulemaking law.

U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, sitting in Boston, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing a sweeping new admissions survey against public universities in 17 states. The ruling came three weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the department in federal court on March 11.

The data collection effort traces to a presidential memorandum Trump signed in August 2025, directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to implement a new admissions reporting system within 120 days. The order followed the Supreme Court's June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, which ended race-conscious admissions while still permitting colleges to consider how race has shaped individual applicants' lives in their essays. Trump alleged that institutions were skirting that ruling by using personal statements and other proxies to continue factoring race into decisions, and directed the department to verify compliance.

The department responded by appending a new tool called the "Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement" to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The supplement required four-year colleges with selective admissions to submit data disaggregated by race, sex, test scores, grade point averages, family income, financial aid, and graduation outcomes, with a retroactive window stretching back seven years. The filing deadline was March 18, 2026, a timeline institutions argued was impossible given they had never tracked those specific metrics. The public comment period had closed only in October 2025, with the final survey released roughly two months later.

Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Indianapolis, a small religious institution with only two institutional research staff, described the compliance burden in a public comment: "Meeting the new requirements would necessitate developing new data extracts, coding structures, validation routines, and quality assurance checks — all while maintaining existing reporting obligations."

Saylor acknowledged the government has legal authority to gather such data but found the compressed timeline fatally undermined the rulemaking process. "The 120-day deadline imposed by the President led directly to the failure of NCES to engage meaningfully with the institutions during the notice-and-comment process to address the multitude of problems presented by the new requirements," he wrote.

The judge also cited the administration's parallel dismantling of the National Center for Education Statistics, the agency charged with running the survey. The plaintiff states argued NCES had been cut from roughly 100 employees to only three amid federal layoffs; the administration said 13 remained plus contractors. Saylor found that if the agency ceased to function, its authority to conduct the survey would vanish entirely.

James hailed the ruling, saying schools "should not have to scramble to produce years of sensitive information to satisfy an arbitrary and unlawful demand." Massachusetts AG Andrea Joy Campbell added: "This Administration's unlawful and haphazard actions are threatening the well-being of Massachusetts students and the prosperity of our colleges and universities."

Saylor rejected the states' contention that the administration planned to use the data to strip institutions of federal funding, finding no evidence to support that specific claim.

The injunction covers public universities in all 17 plaintiff states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington. The case now moves toward a full hearing on the merits.