A federal judge has granted an additional tranche of colleges a delay before they must submit newly required data to the U.S. Department of Education on their applicants, admits and enrollees broken down by race and sex.
Institutional members of two higher education groups — the Association of American Universities and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts — will now have until April 14 to submit the data.
AAU, an association for research universities, has 69 members across the U.S., ranging from private colleges such as Johns Hopkins University to public institutions like Georgia Institute of Technology. AICUM, meanwhile, has 58 institutional members, all of which are private nonprofits in the state. They include Amherst College, Boston University and Harvard University.
Both associations are seeking to join a legal challenge brought by 17 Democratic attorneys general against the Education Department’s new data collection. The department has argued the new data is needed to see whether colleges are complying with a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious admissions.
Just last week, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor delayed the deadline for public colleges in those 17 states. They now have until April 6 to meet the agency’s demands.
When Saylor delayed the deadline for those institutions, he said he would soon issue a ruling on whether to grant the states a preliminary injunction against the data collection while the lawsuit plays out.
In his newest ruling, Saylor said he had not yet decided whether to permanently allow the two associations to join the case or whether to grant their request for a preliminary injunction. Rather, he wrote, the ruling was to allow time to hold a hearing on those matters, which is scheduled for April 13.
According to a court briefing from AAU, the Education Department recently extended the deadline for all institutions to submit the data by March 31. The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
