Jan Resseger tracks the Trump administration’s continued efforts to block anything remotely resembling affirmative action. Reposted with permission.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) ended affirmative action in college admissions. While the Trump administration has also claimed that the narrow decision applies more broadly by rendering illegal all programs and policies that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in higher education and U.S. public schools, most experts continue to believe it is a narrow but extremely consequential decision.
In his 2025 book, The Fall of Affirmative Action, Yale University law professor Justin Driver celebrates the impact of affirmative action since 1960 but predicts ongoing controversy about the issue during the second Trump administration despite the narrow application of the Students for Fair Admissions decision itself:
“The threat of litigation against universities in the post SFFA moment is anything but theoretical. To the contrary, a veritable rogues’ gallery of the conservative legal movement quickly assembled to make clear that they relish pursuing litigation against universities they believe have failed to comply with the Supreme Court’s opinion… Indeed, the Department of Education circulated a hostile notice in February 2025 notifying universities that it would wield SFFA as a cudgel to shape virtually every domain in higher education… The letter propounded a highly dubious interpretation of SFFA, arguing that the opinion’s sweep extended much further than it actually swept.” (The Fall of Affirmative Action, pp. 19-20)
For University World News, Nathan M. Greenfield reports on data proving that the Students for Fair Admissions decision has had an extremely significant impact on the specific admissions policies that SFFA addressed: “Overall, America’s top 50 universities enrolled 2,727 fewer underrepresented minorities (1,444 of whom were Black and 1,223 Hispanic) in 2024 than in the baseline period. Of large institutions, Johns Hopkins University enrolled almost 70% fewer Black students than it had previously and saw the largest percentage decline; the percentage decline for Boston University was 63%, while University of California, Berkley was near 70%. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology enrolled about 58% fewer Black students while New York University (NYU) enrolled 47% fewer. At each of these universities the decline in enrollment of Hispanic students was respectively about 53%, 8%, 5%, 38% and at NYU 41%… Across the country, the surprising increase in enrollment by Black and Hispanic students in state flagship universities following the SFFA decision was 8.4% and 7.7%… (W)hat we are seeing is the impact of… the ‘cascade effect’: Black students with excellent academic records who, because affirmative action was outlawed, were not accepted in the country’s most elite schools, shifted to what Americans call their ‘safety,’ which in many cases is a state flagship university.”
During Donald Trump’s second term, however, officials in the administration have remained vigilant about catching colleges and universities they assumed would cheat by finding ways to increase the enrollment of Black and Hispanic students despite the ban imposed by Students for Fair Admissions. The NY Times‘ Michael Bender and Anemona Hartocollis reported last August: “President Trump… ordered his education Department to begin collecting detailed data on the race and gender of college applicants, as well as test scores and grade point averages… a data collection system that federal law gives the Education Department wide latitude to control and that schools, as a condition of joining student aid programs, agree to supply with information. Still, Mr. Trump’s move… could eventually invite legal challenges, perhaps on the basis of the student privacy law, that might slow or stall the president’s instructions.”
Now in 2026, we can see that the Trump administration has not given up its fixation on ensuring that colleges and universities don’t cheat. On March 11, 2026, the NY Times’ Vimal Patel and Stephaie Saul reported that, “Several states sued the Trump administration… over its mandate that colleges share with the federal government detailed student and admissions data… Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, argued that the new requirements were a way to scrutinize whether colleges were abiding by a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed race-conscious admissions. The states say the effort has been rushed into place to target diversity efforts and creates an undue burden on schools… ‘Once again, this administration is trying to stretch the federal government’s authority to serve its own political agenda,’ Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, said….”
The NY Times followed up two days later to announce: “A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from demanding detailed student admissions data, a mandate that a group of 17 Democratic attorneys general have argued is unlawful. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, of the Boston federal District Court delayed a deadline for universities to submit the data until he had time to consider the case. Then on March 24th, Higher Ed Dive‘s Natalie Schwartz announced that Saylor had extended a March deadline until April 6, “to give the court time to respond to the 17-state coalition’s motion.”
Despite the ongoing legal battle, however, the administration won’t give up. Last week, President Trump’s Department of Justice launched a new investigation into the admissions policies at three prominent medical schools.
The NY Times Michael Bender and Alan Blinder announced: “The Justice Department on Wednesday informed Stanford University, the Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego about the investigations and demanded that the schools turn over extensive lists of data by April 24 or risk interruptions to essential federal funding… The government is seeking information about medical school applicants from each of the past seven years, including test scores, home ZIP codes and any familial relationships to alumni or ties to university donors… ‘ At this time, our investigation will focus on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions,’ Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote in each of the letters (which the Department of Justice sent to the universities).”
Bender and Blinder analyze what’s going on here: “Beyond legal battles, the new investigations exemplify an indisputable flex of federal power in an effort to tilt the racial balance in medical education. The inquiries did not arise from a complaint or allegation, which typically prompt federal action. Instead, the Justice Department has invoked its broad powers from Congress to proactively investigate any federally funded institution for compliance with the law. But the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights law, particularly regarding the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling ending affirmative action, is widely debated. The administration’s civil rights investigations into admissions processes have tended to focus on potential discrimination against white applicants.”
Bender and Blinder elaborate: “The Supreme Court ruling did halt race-conscious admissions, but many university officials maintain that the justices did not forbid a less direct consideration of an applicant’s race, through interviews or essays in the application process. But the administration has taken a harder stance, and has attempted to codify its stricter reading of the ruling through executive orders signed by Mr. Trump and guidance from Attorney General Pam Bondi.”
Justin Driver concludes his 2025 book, The Fall of Affirmative Action, by reminding us all what several generations of affirmative action in college admissions accomplished: “Affirmative action… succeeded in transforming American society for the better. Beginning in the late 1960s, the policy brought significant numbers of Black students to elite college campuses, integrating what had been lily white institutions and, more profoundly, assaulting the nation’s basic racial hierarchy.” “Consider the racial composition of some elite college classes that entered in the fall of 1960: Harvard boasted a bumper crop of 9 Black students (in a class of more than 1,200); Yale had 5 Black students (in a class of more than 1,000); and Princeton—the southernmost Ivy, spiritually if not geographically—claimed a grand total of precisely 1 Black student (in a class of more than 820)… In the two-decade period stretching from 1970 to 1990, Black professionals—once a curiosity—became a comparatively common sight: the number of Black lawyers increased by more than a factor of six; Black doctors tripled; and the Black professoriate more than doubled.” (The Fall of Affirmative Action, pp. 203-204)