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A court hearing was held Monday as the Trump administration and 17 Democratic-led states battle over whether universities should be forced to hand over seven years’ worth of admissions data.
The controversy centers on a U.S. Department of Education memorandum issued last fall that seeks to ensure race-based preferences are not used in college admissions.
The department requires information on the race, gender, standardized test scores, and GPAs of applicants, as well as admitted and enrolled students, from the 2025-26 academic year and six prior years.
The 17 states, led by Democratic attorneys general, filed a lawsuit in March against the demand, arguing it is unlawful to “collect data to further partisan political ends,” and that the request for the massive data set going back seven years is onerous and difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill.
U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor in early April granted a restraining order against the department’s demand to collect the admissions data.
Monday’s hearing was the latest court battle as several groups seek to join in as plaintiffs against the department, including the Association of American Universities.
Whether Saylor will permanently enjoin the Education Department from collecting the data is uncertain, as his main concern in his recent ruling centered more on the process, and seemed to agree that the data should be made available eventually.
“The principal problem, then, lies not in the basic authority of [National Center for Education Statistics] to collect, analyze, and make use of the data,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
Rather, he added, “it arises from the rushed and chaotic manner” in which Trump’s memorandum was rolled out. For example, his ruling flags how the data submission template was changed at least twice in early 2026.
Saylor also wrote that the 120-day deadline imposed by the department “epitomizes arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
The requirement seeks to collect college and universities admissions data in part to ensure they are complying with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which forced schools to implement race-neutral decision making in college admissions.
“We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments. The Trump Administration will ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon stated in a news release at the time.
Although some states are fighting the order, one civil rights activist and anti-affirmative action advocate said they should be willing to hand over the data.
“Progressive state AGs are weaponizing the court system to delay and stall from holding universities accountable to the SCOTUS ruling in SFFA v. Harvard,” Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, told The College Fix.
“State AGs are the chief legal officers in these respective states. They should be working diligently and faithfully to ensure equal access to public higher education, rather than cry wolf in defense of the race-obsessed higher education establishment interest,” she said via email.
Wu added the transparency request is a good step forward in the wake of the SFFA ruling.
“This administrative move away from toxic identity politics is a good first step towards rescuing our colleges and universities from a critical race to the bottom. But government alone is at best insufficient to battle the cultural and ideological roots of this problem,” Wu said.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell declined to comment to The College Fix.
MORE: 17-state coalition sues Education Department over admissions transparency order
