Seventeen Attorneys General Sue to Block Trump's College Race-Data Mandate

Seventeen Democratic state attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit in Boston on Tuesday challenging a Trump administration directive requiring colleges and universities to collect and report expanded race-related admissions data to the Department of Education, escalating a legal battle over higher education policy that has been building since the Supreme Court restricted affirmative action in 2023.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, the coalition's leading voice, characterized the administration's approach as both legally defective and operationally unworkable. "This Administration's unlawful and haphazard actions are threatening the well-being of Massachusetts students and the prosperity of our colleges and universities," Campbell said.

The directive, which President Trump ordered in August, requires institutions to demonstrate through data collection that they are not using race as a factor in admissions decisions. The order followed Trump's concerns that colleges were using personal statements and other indirect proxies to circumvent the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which banned race-based admissions while preserving students' ability to describe how race shaped their personal experiences in application essays.

Campbell argued the federal government's timeline is simply impossible for institutions to meet. "There is no way for institutions to reasonably deliver accurate data in the federal government's rushed and arbitrary time frame, and it is unfair for schools to be threatened with fines, potential losses of funding, and baseless investigations should they not fulfill the Administration's request," she said.

Ellen Keast, a Department of Education spokesperson, defended the data collection effort, though the agency did not provide a detailed public rebuttal to the coalition's legal claims.

The lawsuit is the latest front in a broad coordinated legal campaign by Democratic attorneys general against Trump administration policies. Democratic AGs from 22 states and the District of Columbia have filed dozens of lawsuits since Trump returned to office, targeting executive actions across immigration, healthcare, and now higher education. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has estimated that roughly 80 percent of those joint suits have secured a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, a track record that gives the college data coalition reason for optimism in the near term.

The legal strategy itself has become institutionalized. Democratic AGs held the first of a series of coordinated town halls in Phoenix in March 2025 to align their litigation approach, and preparations for lawsuits against anticipated Trump actions began before the 2024 election results were certified.

The race-data case sits at the intersection of two unresolved tensions in higher education policy. The 2023 Supreme Court ruling left colleges navigating a narrow path: they cannot consider race directly but must still evaluate the full context of an applicant's life. The Trump administration's position is that many institutions have exploited that ambiguity to preserve the practical effect of race-conscious admissions. The attorneys general counter that the administration's enforcement mechanism is legally unsound and punitive in its design.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in Boston. No judge assignment or hearing date had been publicly announced as of Wednesday morning, and the full list of the 17 participating attorneys general had not been released by the coalition.