Several states sued the Trump administration Wednesday over its mandate that colleges share with the federal government detailed student and admissions data, which the government has said is meant to ensure schools are not using racial preferences.

The Trump administration announced in August that schools would be required to report disaggregated data on the race, gender, test scores and GPAs of applicants. Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, argued that the new requirements were a way to scrutinize whether colleges were abiding by a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed race-conscious admissions.

The states say the effort has been rushed into place to target diversity efforts and creates an undue burden on schools. In the lawsuit Wednesday, filed by the attorneys general of 17 mostly left-leaning states including New York and California, the states argue that the Trump administration was attempting to turn the National Center for Education Statistics, a nonpartisan agency, into a “mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aims.”

“Once again, this administration is trying to stretch the federal government’s authority to serve its own political agenda,” Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said in a statement. “Colleges and universities should not be forced to turn over massive amounts of sensitive student data to satisfy another witch hunt.”

The Education Department said Wednesday that American taxpayers “deserve transparency on how their dollars are being spent.”

“The department’s efforts will expand an existing transparency tool to show how universities are taking race into consideration in admissions,” said Ellen Keast, a spokesperson for the department. “What exactly are state AGs trying to shield universities from?”

The suit described an “error-ridden and confusing” process that forced colleges to collect large amounts of data on short notice. The government is requiring seven years’ worth of data, making schools retroactively gather information they had not compiled or maintained, the suit said.

“Colleges are tying up staff and spending millions on a survey that no one will be able to use for legitimate purposes,” said James S. Murphy, senior fellow with the education group Class Action.

Murphy, who applauded the lawsuit, said that more data could be useful but that the little time the government gave colleges to respond meant there was little chance the data would be valuable.

Colleges Emphasized Importance of Racial Diversity

In recent decades, many colleges and universities have emphasized the importance of racially diverse classes. Educators had argued that learning alongside students from different racial and ethnic groups was helpful for society and the business world, among other benefits.

Conservative groups have argued that preferences for underrepresented groups, including Black and Latino students, harmed white and Asian applicants who they say were put at a disadvantage when applying to the nation’s most competitive schools.

After the 2023 Supreme Court decision in the case known as Students for Fair Admissions, which curtailed the use of race but still allowed for it to be considered in some instances, universities had said they remained committed to diversity. Many attempted to build diverse classes without violating the court ruling, and, more recently, the Trump administration’s narrow interpretation of the decision.

In its August announcement, the Trump administration said it would be on the lookout for “hidden racial proxies” that schools might use to seek out minority applicants and had taken to looking for economic diversity.

Some universities had used a system identifying standout students from poor districts, who are often Black or Latino. But last September, the College Board quietly dismantled a tool, called Landscape, that was useful in identifying those students.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, whose organization, the Progressive Policy Institute, recently issued a report on economic diversity in admissions, said that building economically diverse classes is beneficial to universities, whether or not it also results in increased racial diversity.

“It brings students with different sets of life experiences to campus, increases ideological diversity and opens paths to leadership in America to more low-income and working-class students,” Kahlenberg said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Vimal Patel and Stephanie Saul/Haiyun Jiang
c. 2026 The New York Times Company