Judge blocks Trump administration demand for race, GPA data of California college applicants

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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from forcing universities to submit seven years of extensive data for applicants and admitted students — including grade-point averages and test scores — to prove they don’t illegally consider race in admissions.Judge F.Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S.

District Court of Massachusetts issued his order Friday night in response to a lawsuit brought by California and 16 other Democratic-led states.The judge’s preliminary injunction applies only to public colleges and universities in the states that sued while the case proceeds through litigation.For now, the ruling grants a reprieve to the University of California and California State University systems, which said in court filings that the data request was onerous, rushed, risked student privacy and required administrators to track down hard-to-find information for hundreds of thousands of students that individual campuses log differently.In addition to race and GPA information, the Trump administration has asked for standardized test scores, grant aid amounts and family income.Separately this week, Saylor also granted an extension until April 14 for members of the Assn.

of American Universities to submit the same data while the group argues for a further block of the order for its 69 U.S schools.The association’s members include Stanford and USC.

California Two years after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action, President Trump wants colleges to prove they do not consider race in admissions.The U.S.Department of Education’s new policy, announced in August, widely expanded long-standing federal data collection from universities.

It said schools must share the information by March 18.Saylor twice extended the deadline while he considered arguments from both sides on an injunction.Trump administration officials said they requested the information from schools...