California and 16 Democratic states are suing to challenge a Trump administration policy requiring higher education institutions, including University of California and California State University campuses, to collect data — including student grade-point averages — to prove they don’t illegally consider race in admissions.
Atty. Gen.Rob Bonta is among the state attorneys general who filed the suit Wednesday against a Department of Education rule that asks colleges to submit “the race and sex of colleges’ applicants, admitted students and enrolled students.” Bonta called the requirement a “fishing expedition” that is “demanding unprecedented amounts of data from our colleges and universities under the guise of enforcing civil rights law.”
“This is the same administration, I’ll remind you, that gutted the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, leaving thousands of civil rights complaints and investigations in limbo,” Bonta said in a statement. “This latest sham demand threatens to turn a reliable tool into a partisan bludgeon. California is committed to following the law — and we’re going to court to make sure the Trump administration does the same.”
The policy, announced in August, requires schools to submit disaggregated data on gender, race, grade-point averages and test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students by March 18.
The Trump administration is requesting seven years of data and says it wants schools to prove they are not illegally considering race as a factor in admissions — a practice struck down nationally after a 2023 Supreme Court case involving Harvard. In that case, justices said colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.
California and Democratic states that filed the suit in a Boston federal court say in their complaint that the government is attempting to turn the nonpartisan National Center for Education Statistics into a “mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims.”
The Trump administration has accused numerous elite institutions, including the UC system, of breaking the law by using race in admissions and discriminating against white and Asian American students. This year, it sued UCLA in federal court, alleging that the David Geffen School of Medicine illegally practices affirmative action. UC and UCLA have said they follow California state law, which has banned considering race as a factor in admissions since 1997.
President Trump ordered the new policy last summer after he raised concerns that colleges and universities were using personal statements and other proxies to consider race, which he views as illegal discrimination.
Ellen Keast, an Education Department spokesperson, defended the data collection.
“American taxpayers invest over $100 billion into higher education each year and deserve transparency on how their dollars are being spent,” Keast said in a statement. “The Department’s efforts will expand an existing transparency tool to show how universities are taking race into consideration in admissions. What exactly are State AGs trying to shield universities from?”
The new policy is similar to parts of recent settlement agreements the government negotiated with Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research money. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade-point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to be audited by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public.
The government made a similar ask of UC in August when it proposed a $1.2-billion settlement fine to resolve allegations of federal civil rights law violations at UCLA after cutting off more than half a billion dollars in federal medical, science, and energy research funding.
UC President James B. Milliken said the university will not pay the fine but is open to talks with the Trump administration. No agreement has been reached, although faculty and union-led lawsuits resulted in research funding being restored and strict limits on the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape UC policies and culture through threats of funding cuts.
The Trump administration’s August memo on race in admissions directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to require colleges to report more data “to provide adequate transparency into admissions” to the National Center for Education Statistics. After a public comment period — in which California and other Democrat-led states submitted notices opposing the rule — the Department of Education finalized the reporting requirement on Dec. 18.
If colleges fail to submit timely, complete and accurate data, McMahon can take action under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which outlines requirements for colleges receiving federal financial aid for students, according to the memo.
Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Andrea Joy Campbell, who co-led the suit along with Bonta, said in a statement that “there is no way for institutions to reasonably deliver accurate data in the federal government’s rushed and arbitrary time frame, 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.”
The government uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, to gather information from thousands of colleges and universities that receive federal aid. The coalition also argues that the new data collection demands jeopardize student privacy.
“Many institutions have data protection obligations to their students, which are placed at risk by the administration’s new IPEDS demands for in-depth information about individual students,” the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.
Casey writes for the Associated Press.
