Judge Blocks Trump Data Order Targeting College Race Admissions Records
A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration effort to force colleges to prove they are not considering race in admissions, halting a key enforcement push tied to the post–affirmative action landscape.
The ruling raises immediate questions about how far the federal government can go in policing universities that officials suspect are still using race indirectly.
According to AP News and Reuters, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Department of Education from requiring public universities in 17 states to submit up to seven years of admissions data broken down by race and sex.
The administration argued the data was necessary to detect whether schools were using “racial proxies” despite the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-conscious admissions.
But the court found a major flaw in how the policy was executed, pointing to what it described as a rushed and disorganized rollout that failed to properly engage universities.
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“The principal problem… arises from the rushed and chaotic manner” of implementation, Judge Saylor wrote.
The decision does not fully reject the government’s authority to collect such data, creating uncertainty about whether a revised version of the policy could survive.
The case matters because it sits at the center of a growing national conflict over how to enforce the end of affirmative action and whether universities are complying in practice.
More legal challenges are expected as the administration continues separate actions against individual schools, including ongoing disputes over admissions data access.
For now, the ruling pauses enforcement but leaves the broader fight unresolved.
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