Seventeen states filed suit this week challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s new requirement that four‑year colleges report disaggregated admissions data, alleging the agency unlawfully expanded IPEDS and imposed an “onerous burden” without following Administrative Procedure Act rules. The states, led by Republican attorneys general, ask a federal judge to block the survey and declare the department’s rulemaking unlawful. The Education Department unveiled the expanded Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collection to track compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 rulings on race‑conscious admissions. The new request compels institutions to submit applicant, admitted and enrolled data — including test scores, family income and GPA — broken down by race and sex across six prior years. Colleges and higher‑education groups have warned the timeline and scope are impractical; state plaintiffs call the policy partisan and procedurally defective. University compliance officers and registrars are already scrambling to inventory legacy systems and assess whether historical records can meet the department’s requirements.