A federal judge pushed back the Education Department’s deadline for colleges to submit new race- and sex‑disaggregated applicant and admit data by one week amid a 17‑state legal challenge. The court moved the deadline to March 25 to allow time to consider whether the department can compel institutions to produce six years of granular admissions records while litigation proceeds. Seventeen Democratic attorneys general sued, arguing the data request is a "fishing expedition" that risks privacy and may be used to penalize institutions. The Education Department maintains the data are necessary to enforce recent limits on race‑conscious admissions. Colleges warned the original timetable was unrealistic given gaps in institutional data collection.