Boston-based U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor further restricted the Trump administration from requiring universities to provide admissions data in an April 24 ruling.

The U.S. Education Department requested seven years of admissions data on the sex and race of college students to track compliance with the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled race-based affirmative action in college admissions violated the 14th Amendment.

Last month, attorneys general from 17 states collectively filed a lawsuit in response to the Trump administration’s college admissions request. An April 3 ruling granted protection to the states’ public universities involved in the lawsuit.

A Boston University campus tour group walks by the Admissions Reception Center. U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor further restricted the scope of the Trump administration’s demand that universities provide admission data April 24. (SUMMER LAROSE)

Individual schools and academic groups, including the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, intervened in their lawsuit, advocating for Saylor’s ruling to expand to cover private institutions. 

“We believe the data collection requirements under the [Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement Survey] exceed DOE’s authority and are unlawfully burdensome, forcing our member institutions to divert precious time and resources that should be spent on supporting students,” AICUM wrote in a statement to The Daily Free Press. “We are simply asking that the DOE adhere to due process and existing statutes and regulations.”

In last week’s preliminary injunction ruling, Saylor cited the “agency’s failure to consider” its capacity to implement a “massive” data reporting requirement, as the Trump administration is working to downsize or eliminate the Department and the National Center for Education Statistics altogether. 

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell echoed Saylor’s concerns in a press release last month.

“There is no way for institutions to reasonably deliver accurate data in the federal government’s rushed and arbitrary timeframe, and it is unfair for schools to be threatened with fines, potential losses of funding, and baseless investigations should they not fulfill the Administration’s request,” Campbell wrote in the release. 

Vinay Harpalani, a professor at the University of New Mexico who teaches courses on race and law, said the Trump administration is using this data request as well as its other “investigations and punitive actions” as a motivation for institutions to adjust policy in a way that aligns with the goals of the administration.

He cited the settlements Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania reached with the government in order to restore federal funding as examples of this. 

“It’s kind of a fishing expedition by the Trump administration,” Harpalani said. “If you press these universities hard enough, gain all of this data, [the administration] can find something in there that [they] can accuse them of doing something that violates SFFA or doing something else wrong, and that’s a reason to penalize them in different ways.”

The coalition of state attorneys general argued the rushed implementation of the new survey requirements could lead to baseless investigations into the schools’ practices and could “jeopardize student privacy” by requesting information that could identify individual students. 

“When you have all of the data disaggregated in the way that the Trump administration wants, it is possible that data could be used to identify students individually,” Harpalani said.

However, a greater concern for students could be the use of the data by the Trump administration to change or affect university policy, Harpalani said. 

He said the Trump administration has done surveillance on campus activity, particularly as it relates to student activism, and that the demand for more data could be used to further exert control over university administrations.

“My broader concern is allowing the Trump administration, the federal government, to change or affect university policy, data admission or data collection,” Harpalani said.

Boston University spokesperson Rachel Lapal Cavallario wrote in a statement to The Daily Free Press that the school is covered by the preliminary injunction.

“The University will continue to monitor the litigation related to ACTS reporting and will comply with applicable court orders,” Lapal Cavallario wrote.

Harpalani said he believes the plaintiffs in this case have a “good chance” at prevailing in the lawsuit. 

“The fact that the preliminary injunction is granted shows that the judge believes that the attorney generals, that the plaintiffs here, challenging this action are likely to prevail on the merits,” Harpalani said.

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