Court Extends ACTS Deadline to March 25 for Plaintiff States as Legal Challenge Proceeds

Quick Hits

• Seventeen states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin), led by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have sued the U.S. Department of Education (ED) over IPEDS’s Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS), alleging violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the E-Government Act.
• On March 13, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) extending the ACTS survey deadline from March 18, 2026, to March 25, 2026, providing institutions additional time while the court considers the plaintiffs’ motion.

Background and Scope of ACTS

The lawsuit stems from an August 7, 2025, Presidential Memorandum, titled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” which directed ED to use IPEDS to monitor university compliance with the Supreme Court of the United States’ June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Office of Management and Budget approved the ACTS survey on December 18, 2025, with submissions originally due March 18, 2026. The survey applies to all four-year institutions that utilize selective admissions.

ACTS requires institutions to report admissions, aid, and outcomes data disaggregated by race, sex, test scores, GPA, income, and other factors for the current academic year, and, for the first time in IPEDS history, six prior years (2019–20 through 2024–25).

The Plaintiffs’ Claims

The complaint asserts three counts under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA): (1) that ACTS exceeds statutory authority because IPEDS data collection must be “objective, secular, neutral, and nonideological”; (2) procedural violations of the Paperwork Reduction Act and E-Government Act, including failures to minimize burdens and conduct a required privacy impact assessment; and (3) arbitrary and capricious action in bypassing the Technical Review Panel process the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has used since 2002 for new IPEDS components.

Institutional Concerns

Plaintiffs emphasize significant harm to higher education institutions. According to a survey of over 500 institutional research professionals cited in the complaint, 88 percent identified the retroactive reporting requirement as untenable, and 55 percent estimated over 250 hours of staff time per year to complete the survey. The complaint also raises privacy concerns, noting that the level of disaggregation, with data parsed across race, gender, GPA, test scores, income, and program, may result in cell sizes so small that individual students could be identified.

TRO Motion and Court Order

On March 13, 2026, the plaintiff states filed an emergency motion for a TRO, seeking to enjoin the deadline, prevent access to submitted data, and block enforcement actions. That same day, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV issued a temporary restraining order granting partial relief, extending the deadline to March 25, 2026. The court noted this extension is “without prejudice to a further extension of the deadline or other preliminary relief as justice may require,” signaling that additional relief remains possible.

In the underlying complaint, the plaintiffs seek a declaration that the ACTS survey is contrary to law, vacatur of the ACTS survey, a stay of the survey’s implementation, and a permanent injunction preventing ED from compelling survey completion or commencing enforcement actions based on ACTS submissions.

Next Steps for Institutions

With the court’s order extending the ACTS deadline to March 25, 2026, institutions have a brief reprieve but still face considerable uncertainty. Notably, there is ambiguity regarding whether the deadline extension applies to all covered institutions or only to those in the seventeen plaintiff states. The plaintiffs’ TRO motion specifically requested relief for the plaintiffs and the plaintiffs’ “Institutions of Higher Education,” but the court’s order used broader language, extending “the deadline to complete the ACTS survey” generally.

Until ED issues clarifying guidance, institutions in non-plaintiff states may want to proceed cautiously and consider whether the original March 18, 2026, deadline still applies to them. As institutions of higher education face fines of up to $71,545 per violation and a potential loss of eligibility under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 for noncompliance, they may want to monitor this litigation closely as the court left open the possibility of further relief.

Ogletree Deakins’ Higher Education Practice Group and Workforce Analytics and Compliance Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Compliance, Government Contracting and Reporting, Higher Education, State Developments, and Workforce Analytics and Compliance blogs as additional information becomes available.

This article and more information on how the Trump administration’s actions impact employers can be found on Ogletree Deakins’ Administration Resource Hub.

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