A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order relating to a Trump Administration data demand to colleges and universities, a demand that a coalition of attorneys general from 17 states has
On March 11, the coalition, co-led by attorneys general from Massachusetts, California and Maryland, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The complaint named the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon among defendants.
In a motion filed Friday, the plaintiffs cited a March 18 deadline for their institutions of higher education to complete the submission of "a vast array of data" to a new component of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, a system of interrelated surveys that gather data on an annual basis from universities.
The new component – known as the ACTS survey for short – "demands an unprecedented scope of disaggregated data" from the institutions of higher education, the motion said.
"Defendants, in turn, have threatened penalties if they deem this data incomplete or unsatisfactory," the plaintiffs' motion said.
The order from U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV was issued at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday.
"In order to permit a hearing and orderly resolution of the issues, the court hereby issues a temporary restraining order extending the deadline to complete the ACTS survey through March 25, 2026, and temporarily restraining defendants from enforcing the deadline of March 18, 2026, without prejudice to a further extension of the deadline or other preliminary relief as justice may require," the judge said in his order.
The Office of Management and Budget and Russell Vought, director of the OMB, were also named in the March 11 complaint as defendants.
In addition to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the State of California and the State of Maryland, the other plaintiffs listed in the complaint were the State of Colorado, the State of Connecticut, the State of Delaware, the State of Hawaii, the State of Illinois, the State of Nevada, the State of New Jersey, the State of New York, the State of Oregon, the State of Rhode Island, the State of Vermont, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Washington and the State of Wisconsin.
