A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from forcing colleges to submit seven years of extensive data on applicants and admitted students, including grade point averages and test scores, to show that they do not illegally consider race in admissions.
Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the Massachusetts District Court issued his order Friday night in response to a lawsuit filed by California and 16 other Democratic-led states.
The judge's preliminary injunction applies only to public colleges and universities in the states that sued as the case moves through litigation.
For now, the ruling grants a reprieve to the University of California and California State University systems, which said in court papers that the data request was onerous, rushed, put student privacy at risk and required administrators to track down hard-to-find information for hundreds of thousands of students that individual campuses track differently. In addition to information on race and GPA, the Trump administration has requested standardized test scores, grant amounts, and household income.
Furthermore, this week, Saylor also granted an extension until April 14 for Association members. of American universities to present the same data as the group advocates for a new block of the order for its 69 American schools. Members of the association include Stanford and USC.
California accuses government of “fishing expedition”
The U.S. Department of Education's new policy, announced in August, greatly expanded colleges' long-standing federal data collection. He said schools must share the information by March 18.
Saylor twice extended the deadline while considering both sides' arguments for an injunction.
Trump administration officials said they have requested information from schools to show they do not illegally consider race in admissions. The Supreme Court struck down such affirmative action policies in 2023.
In that case, the justices said colleges could consider how race has shaped students' lives if they wrote about the topic in admissions essays. In California, Proposition 209 has prohibited public colleges and universities from considering race in admissions since 1997.
In filing California's lawsuit against the Trump administration, the Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called the request a “fishing expedition” that “demanded unprecedented amounts of data from our colleges and universities under the guise of enforcing civil rights laws.”
The Democratic states argued in their legal complaint that the government was turning the nonpartisan National Center for Education Statistics into a “mechanism to enforce the law and promote partisan political objectives.”
Trump investigations into higher education
The Trump administration has accused several elite institutions, including the UC system, of violating the law by using race in admissions and discriminating against white and Asian American students. This year, the government joined a lawsuit against UCLA in federal court, alleging that the David Geffen School of Medicine illegally practices affirmative action. UC and UCLA have said they follow California and federal laws.
Last week, the Justice Department said it was also investigating whether the UC San Diego and Stanford medical schools engaged in racial discrimination in admissions. As part of those investigations, the Justice Department required medical schools to submit students' personal and academic data by April 24 or face potential federal funding cuts. The schools said they follow state and federal laws regarding admissions and are reviewing government requests.
Information requested about the medical school included data on students' race, medical school admissions test scores, undergraduate GPA, home ZIP codes, citizenship status, admissions essays, and whether they are legacy admits or have family members who donated to the schools.
In multiple investigations and legal filings since last year, the Trump administration has widely argued that colleges and universities are using personal statements and other indicators, such as income levels or ZIP codes, to illegally consider applicants' race.
The August 2025 government memo, which was at the center of the legal battle, directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to obtain more information from universities to “provide adequate transparency in admissions.”
“If data collection is delayed, the release of admissions statistics will also be delayed, and an entire year of college applicants will be denied excessive information about their chances of landing a coveted spot at their dream schools based on their race, sex, and other characteristics,” government lawyers wrote in a court filing. “These students may spend money on colleges where they have no realistic chance of admission.”
The Justice Department said in court papers that as of March 23, 1,700 colleges and universities had completed their filings or qualified for extensions after submitting partial reports.
If colleges don't submit the data, the government can fine them under the Higher Education Act of 1965, which spells out requirements for colleges that receive federal student financial aid, such as Pell Grants.
