Judge blocks Trump admin efforts to seize race-based admissions data from schools

A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary block on President Donald Trump's efforts to obtain race-based admissions data from universities in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling barring affirmative action in college admissions.

The ruling came as part of a suit from a multitude of Democratic state attorneys general, who have argued that Trump's demands would impose burdensome costs on the university systems, The Hill reported. U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor issued the ruling in favor of the 17 states that had sued.

“The Trump Administration is on a fishing expedition — demanding unprecedented amounts of data from our colleges and universities under the guise of enforcing civil rights law,” California AG Rob Bonta said of the matter.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case. Since then, some schools have attempted workarounds to continue de facto race-based admissions.

The Trump administration, for its part, has sought to impose the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) system to require colleges to provide race-based admissions data that would help Washington monitor admissions policies for violations.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.