A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from collecting a new round of student race and admissions data from about 200 public colleges in 17 states, keeping the dispute in play while the lawsuit proceeds. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Education’s Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS), finding the plaintiffs had shown a likely likelihood of success on claims that the mandate was “arbitrary and capricious” and would cause “immediate irreparable harm” if schools were forced to comply. The ruling halts ACTS only for public institutions in the 17 states that jointly filed the March lawsuit. The order leaves institutions outside those states potentially exposed to compliance obligations while the legal fight continues. ACTS would have required selective four-year institutions to report race, gender, high-school grades, standardized-test scores, and family income for applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students across seven admission cycles. The Department of Education intended to add the supplement to IPEDS, and the administration framed the data push as a response to concerns that colleges might still be considering applicants’ race after the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision.