Judge Blocks Trump's College Admissions Data Push In 17 States

A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s admissions data collection for public universities in 17 states, delivering a major blow to his crackdown on the use of race in college admissions.

The administration significantly expanded the scope of admissions information colleges must submit to the federal government after Trump issued an August memo directing the Education Department to do so. The move is a key part of a Trump administration effort to probe whether schools are discriminating against applicants based on race.

But a group of Democratic attorneys general from 17 states sued in early March to block the data collection.

Massachusetts District Court Judge Dennis Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in a late Friday order the survey was created in a “rushed and chaotic manner” and problems with it are being “compounded” by the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the Education Department.

Saylor’s preliminary injunction is a stark example of how the administration's efforts to dismantle the Education Department are getting in the way of its policy goals.

The states argued that the number of employees at the department's National Center for Education Statistics has been cut from about 100 to only three amid Trump's mass government layoffs, which would complicate the division's work to collect and analyze the data.

The administration disputed that, saying 13 employees remained at the agency’s statistical arm and the collection and processing would be handled by contractors.

But Saylor said the government was "conspicuously silent" in explaining how the data will be handled once the agency no longer exists.

“This is not a merely technical issue,” Saylor wrote. The process "cannot be turned over to states and local communities; they have no authority … to conduct such surveys. Nor, for that matter, does any federal agency other than NCES.”

Once the division no longer exists, the authority to conduct the survey "vanishes — and with it the authority both to ‘collect’ data and to ‘analyze’ data collected from prior surveys,” he added. “Whether and where that data will continue to exist, and who will have access to it, is entirely unclear.”

But Saylor's ruling was not a complete victory for the states, with the judge writing that the agency has the authority to collect the data it is seeking.

Saylor also said he saw no reason to restrict the department from using it to investigate potential discrimination, rejecting an argument by the states that Trump would use the data to punish colleges and could impose severe penalties such as the loss of federal funding.

The Education Department and state officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

The department's efforts to significantly expand the scope of the data collection would have required colleges to submit detailed information on race, ethnicity, gender, family income, parental education and other demographic factors, as well as admission test scores and grade point averages. These data requirements would have applied to all applicants, admitted students and enrolled students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. They also would have dated back seven years.

Previously, the agency had only collected the racial breakdown of enrolled students, not applicants or admitted students.

The judge's ruling will create a major hole in the data survey, considering nearly 3 million students are enrolled at public universities in Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

While the ruling only applies to public universities in those 17 states, several groups representing colleges across the country are seeking to intervene in hopes of also being covered by the stay. A hearing is scheduled for April 13 to consider their intervention requests, which could expand the ruling. It also could thwart the Education Department's plans of releasing the data this summer.

The survey stems from the landmark Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admission, Inc. v. Harvard, which gutted the use of race in admissions, with the Trump administration probing whether schools are discriminating against applicants based on race.

Usually data collection changes take time to implement, but the Education Department said it needed to meet Trump’s 120-day deadline. College officials and other education experts have expressed concern that schools will not be able to submit accurate data by the deadline. They say schools would need to hire more staff to do this work and that the demand is placing a significant strain on their offices.

Saylor said the law does not require “a lengthy gestation period” for proposed changes to the survey.

The problem is not the data collection or how it will be used, Saylor said, but rather the “rushed and chaotic manner” in which the survey was created.

Saylor said the agency’s statistical arm created a process to “permit careful consideration of complex issues” and give schools time to adapt to new requirements.

The Trump administration “discarded that process here solely in order to try to meet the 120-day deadline,” Saylor wrote.