Court Stalls Trump’s Effort to Enforce Affirmative Action Ban | The American Spectator

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to require colleges to turn over detailed race-based admissions data. 

U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued this temporary restraining order to postpone the deadline for admissions data collection last Friday. The order required federally funded colleges to provide admissions reports by March 18 that were “disaggregated by race and sex relating to their applicant pool, admitted cohort, and enrolled cohort at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs,” according to the Department of Education.

Saylor’s order pushed the deadline to March 25 to give the court time to review the states’ claims and ensure an “orderly resolution of the issues,” Fox News reported.

The admissions data transparency measure is part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to dismantle affirmative action and DEI practices, following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down “race-conscious admissions policies” in 2023. 

The president signed a presidential memorandum in August 2025 that instructed the secretary of education to “require higher education institutions receiving Federal financial assistance to be transparent regarding their admissions practices.” The directive called for an overhaul of federal education data systems, expanded admissions reporting for increased transparency, and strengthened enforcement of data accuracy requirements for public colleges. 

The ruling provided a brief win to a coalition of Democratic states that sued to block the president’s directive on March 11. In the lawsuit, the states opposed a change to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System; they argued that the federal government was “converting [the data system] from a reliable tool for methodical statistical reporting to a mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims.” The states further alleged, “The scope, breadth, and rushed process of implementing the [change to the data system] has harmed and will continue to harm Plaintiffs.”

After filing the lawsuit, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell stated, “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.”

Ellen Keast, deputy press secretary for the Department of Education, responded, “American taxpayers invest over $100 billion into higher education each year and deserve transparency on how their dollars are being spent … What exactly are State AGs trying to shield universities from?” 

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