A separate federal ruling continued to narrow the reach of the Trump administration’s admissions-data push by pausing ACTS compliance for about 200 public colleges in states that sued. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the plaintiffs had shown the government’s mandate was likely “arbitrary and capricious,” and that campuses faced “immediate irreparable harm” if forced to report. The ACTS requirement would have required selective four-year institutions to submit extensive applicant and enrolled-student information disaggregated by race and gender, high-school grades, standardized-test scores, and family income across multiple admission cycles. The judge said the Education Department rejected multiple college comments during a rushed implementation period. The order keeps the legal dispute alive as the administration seeks to incorporate ACTS into IPEDS and to use the data to test compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action limits. For institutions, the rulings delay the operational work of building new data pipelines while compliance teams monitor possible appeals and further court actions.