First Circuit Weighs Blocking Admissions Data Reporting Requireme

Quick Hits

• A Massachusetts federal court extended a temporary restraining order halting new data reporting requirements for state colleges and universities until April 6, 2026, while considering a preliminary injunction.
• Seventeen states claim the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) survey imposes unlawful burdens and violates administrative laws by politicizing data collection.
• The federal government argued that states will not face irreparable harm from the reporting deadline and asserted that the data collection serves legitimate antidiscrimination enforcement purposes.

During a hearing on March 24, 2026, in Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Education, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor, IV, indicated that he would extend a temporary restraining order (TRO) halting the deadline for colleges and universities to submit the Admissions and Consumer Transparent Supplement (ACTS) survey until April 6, 2026, while he considers whether to issue a more permanent preliminary injunction.

Judge Saylor then issued an order extending the TRO to “provide an opportunity for supplemental briefing,” but limited it to “the 17 named plaintiffs and their constituent institutions of higher education.” The delay came a day before the March 25 deadline for colleges and universities to comply with the ACTS survey reporting requirement, which Judge Saylor had set in a prior TRO that delayed the ED’s original March 18 deadline.

Adoption of the ACTS Survey

The ACTS survey opened on December 18, 2025, following a ninety-day notice-and-comment period. The survey expands the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). It operationalizes President Donald Trump’s August 2025 memorandum, “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” and the same-day directive from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. The directive cited the Supreme Court of the United States’ 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), which held that discrimination on the basis of race in admissions is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

States Allege the ACTS Survey Is Unlawful

In a lawsuit filed on March 11, 2026, the coalition of seventeen states alleged that the ACTS survey transformed what has traditionally been valuable, nonpartisan data collection into a “mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims.” The lawsuit emphasized the harm to higher education institutions from the data collection and alleged new reporting component violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), violates the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), and is arbitrary and capricious and unlawful.

The states also filed a motion for a TRO to prohibit the government from: (1) accessing the information uploaded by the states’ colleges and universities in the ACTS survey; (2) requiring the state colleges and universities from completing the ACTS survey; (3) assessing penalties based on the submissions; and (4) using the ACTS survey for an investigation or enforcement action.

TRO to Preliminary Injunction

During the latest hearing, counsel for the states argued that the ACTS survey introduced new, burdensome requirements on universities in a hasty process that will result in the collection of imperfect data that is statistically useless but will be used by the federal government to enforce antidiscrimination and civil rights laws. According to a survey of more than 500 institutional research professionals cited in the complaint, 88 percent identified the retroactive reporting requirement as untenable, and 55 percent estimated more than 250 hours of staff time per year to complete the survey. The states also raised privacy concerns, noting that the level of data disaggregation—parsed across race, gender, GPA, test scores, income, and program—may result in cell sizes so small that individual students could be identified. This “massive overhaul of IPEDS” was done without proper consideration of the burden on colleges and universities in violation of the PRA, she argued.

However, Judge Saylor suggested that enforcement may be a “legal use” of the data: “The point being that the data is being collected for a legitimate purpose that includes, I think, on some broad level, some enforcement of federal antidiscrimination laws,” he said during the hearing.

The government opposed any further TRO or preliminary injunction. Counsel for the federal government argued that the states will not suffer irreparable harm by meeting the data collection deadline, noting that the states had known about the ACTS survey’s requirements for months but waited until just days before the original March 18 deadline to file suit. Further, the states are unlikely to succeed on the merits that the data collection is unlawful, as they have not explained how enforcement of antidiscrimination and civil rights laws is inherently partisan, she argued.

Judge Saylor said he was prepared to extend the TRO until April 6 and to consider converting it into a preliminary injunction. He gave the parties until March 30 to file a supplemental briefing on the issues.

The judge did not say how he would rule but appeared poised to issue a preliminary injunction. In particular, he had pointed questions for the government about President Trump’s statements that ED would be shut down and recent staffing cuts. During the hearing, he asked the government’s counsel whether a media report that NCES has as few as three employees was true. He said he was “unsure” how the ACTS survey data collection and processing would be carried out, given the potential ED shutdown and staffing cuts. These questions may signal the judge’s thinking on irreparable harm and the feasibility of carrying out the data collection.

Next Steps

The extended TRO to April 6 will provide a temporary reprieve from the ACTS survey requirements. The court’s order extends relief to “the 17 named plaintiffs and their constituent institutions of higher education,” and was issued “without prejudice to the issuance of such other preliminary relief as justice may require.”

Notably, the order’s reference to “constituent institutions of higher education” is broader than strictly state-run colleges and may encompass other institutions within the plaintiff states; however, the judge indicated during the hearing that relief would be limited to institutions connected to the seventeen plaintiff states. While Judge Saylor did say it may be possible to stay the agency action under the APA, which would effectively function as a universal injunction, he noted that federal courts are limited in issuing such injunctions following the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc.

For now, higher education institutions may want to stay tuned to the litigation and consider necessary steps to comply with the ACTS survey.