Trump directed the Education Department to collect college race-admissions data in 120 days, bypassing notice-and-comment rulemaking

On August 7, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum titled "Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions," directing the Secretary of Education to expand reporting requirements under the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to collect data from colleges purporting to demonstrate they were not using race as a factor in admissions decisions. The memorandum imposed a 120-day deadline for NCES to initiate enhanced reporting requirements for the 2025–2026 school year — a timeline that compressed the process to the point that the legally required federal notice-and- comment rulemaking period could not be completed before the mandate took effect.

A coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general filed suit challenging the directive. The lawsuit did not dispute the administration's underlying authority to collect admissions data but argued that the presidentially-imposed 120-day deadline forced NCES to bypass the notice-and-comment procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act before imposing new data-collection obligations on regulated institutions.

2026-04-03 — U.S. District Judge Saylor granted preliminary injunction blocking mandate for public universities in 17 plaintiff states [2, 3, 4]

U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV (D. Mass.) granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the data-collection mandate against public universities in the 17 plaintiff states. Saylor found that the administration likely possessed underlying authority to collect the data but that the presidentially-imposed deadline had caused NCES to skip legally required administrative procedure, describing the rollout as "rushed and chaotic." The injunction did not address private universities or institutions in non-plaintiff states.