A federal judge in Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction Friday blocking the Department of Education from requiring public colleges and universities in 17 states to turn over seven years of detailed race-based admissions data. U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor ruled the administration's data collection effort violated the Administrative Procedure Act, not because the government lacked the authority to collect it, but because of how fast it tried to move.
The distinction matters. The judge explicitly found that the Department of Education likely does have the authority to "collect, analyze, and make use of the data." The legal defeat here isn't about the goal. It's about the timeline.
According to The Hill, an executive order issued in August directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "expand the scope of required reporting to provide adequate transparency into admissions" within 120 days. The objective was straightforward: determine whether colleges and universities were still using race as a factor in admissions decisions after the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling striking down affirmative action.
That ruling was supposed to end racial preferences in college admissions. The question the administration was trying to answer is whether schools actually complied or simply found quieter ways to keep doing what they were doing. Anyone who has watched higher education's response to the 2023 decision knows the question is not paranoid. University administrators spent the months after the ruling openly discussing how to preserve "diversity" outcomes through alternative means. The data collection was designed to find out if those discussions became policy.
Seventeen Democratic-led states sued to stop it.
Judge Saylor focused on the 120-day window the executive order imposed on the National Center for Education Statistics. The judge noted that NCES data collection efforts typically involve "a lengthy gestation period" and a formal review process. The compressed timeline, he found, bypassed those requirements.
"That deadline was not driven by any exigency, by the complexity of the subject matter, or the burden imposed on the institutions; it was set in response to a presidential decree. Indeed, NCES expressly acknowledged that the only reason it did not use the TRP process was because of the President's deadline."
Saylor described the overall approach as a "rushed and chaotic manner" of implementing a policy that had a legitimate legal foundation. He characterized the agency's conduct as "arbitrary and capricious," the standard legal language for APA violations.
The judge also pointed to what he saw as a compounding factor: a separate May executive order directing McMahon to take "all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States." Saylor found that the simultaneous push to dismantle the department while expanding its data collection created additional procedural problems.
Strip away the procedural fight, and you're left with a simple question: Are colleges obeying the law?
The Supreme Court told them to stop discriminating by race in admissions. The administration tried to verify compliance. Democratic attorneys general sued to prevent the verification. Think about what that sequence communicates.
New York Attorney General Letitia James applauded the ruling and called the administration's efforts a "crusade" that she deemed "dangerous." She added:
"Students should not have to live in fear that their personal data will be handed over to the federal government, just as schools should not have to scramble to produce years of sensitive information to satisfy an arbitrary and unlawful demand."
The framing is revealing. James characterizes the collection of admissions data as something students should "live in fear" of. But if schools aren't considering race, the data would simply confirm that. The only scenario in which transparency is threatening is one where the data might show noncompliance.
Sean Robins, director of advocacy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, offered a more practical objection during a March 26 hearing:
"The challenge is not a lack of willingness — it's that institutions are being asked to reconstruct datasets that, in many cases, were never collected in this format to begin with or no longer exist."
This is a more honest argument, and it points to a real logistical challenge. But it also raises its own uncomfortable question: if institutions never collected the data in a format that would reveal whether race influenced decisions, how would anyone ever know if they violated the Supreme Court's ruling?
The injunction blocks the data collection for now, but it does not close the door permanently. The judge affirmed the underlying authority. The administration could pursue the same goal through the proper APA notice-and-comment process. That takes longer, but it removes the procedural vulnerability that sank this attempt.
The broader dynamic remains unchanged. The Supreme Court ruled that racial preferences in admissions are unconstitutional. Enforcement requires data. The states that sued to block the data collection are, functionally, suing to make enforcement impossible. They are not arguing that schools are complying with the law. They are arguing that nobody should be allowed to check.
Procedural compliance matters. The administration should follow the proper channels. But the 17 states celebrating this ruling should be asked a simple question: if your universities have nothing to hide, why are you fighting so hard to keep the lights off?
