BOSTON — A coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging A.J Trump administration policy This requires institutions of higher education to collect data showing that they are not considering race in their admissions processes.
President Donald Trump ordered the new policy in August after he raised concerns that colleges and universities were using personal data and other proxies to look at race, which he considers illegal discrimination.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against the use Affirmative action in acceptance But the colleges mentioned may still be considering how race shapes students’ lives if applicants share this information in their admissions essays.
“This administration’s unlawful and wanton actions threaten the well-being of Massachusetts students and the prosperity of our colleges and universities,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement. “There is no way for institutions to provide reasonably accurate data in the federal government’s rushed and arbitrary time frame, and it is unfair for schools to be threatened with fines, potential loss of funding, and baseless investigations if the administration’s request is not met.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Boston.
Ellen Keast, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, defended the data collection.
“American taxpayers invest more than $100 billion in higher education each year and deserve transparency about how their money is spent,” Keast said in a statement. “The department’s efforts will expand the existing transparency tool to show how universities take race into account in admissions. What exactly are state prosecutors trying to protect universities from?”
The new policy is similar to parts of the last one Settlement agreements The government negotiated with Brown University and Columbia Universityand get their federal research funds back. Universities agreed to provide government data on race, grade point averages, and standardized test scores for applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to be audited by the government and to publish admissions statistics to the public.
The memo directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to require colleges to report more data “to provide adequate transparency in admissions.” The National Center for Education Statistics will collect new data, including race and gender for college applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The data, due by March 18, must be disaggregated by race and gender and reported retrospectively over the past seven years, McMahon said.
If colleges fail to submit complete and accurate data in a timely manner, McMahon could take action under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which sets requirements for colleges receiving federal financial aid to students, according to the memo.
Campbell says the survey was rushed and “leaves institutions vulnerable to inadvertent errors and unreliable data that can lead to costly penalties and unfounded investigations into their practices that jeopardize student privacy and can lead to individuals being easily identified.”
The government uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, to collect information from thousands of colleges and universities that receive federal aid. The coalition also argues that the new data collection requirements put students’ privacy at risk.
“Many institutions have data protection obligations to their students, who are put at risk by the administration’s new IPEDS demands for in-depth information about individual students,” the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.