Judge Extends ACTS Reporting Deadline Again, But Only For Public Institutions in 17 States
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
UPDATE: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has extended the ACTS reporting deadline for institutions not included in the lawsuit against the Department of Education (ED) from March 25 to March 31. Institutions that are private and/or are not located in the 17 states now have until March 31 to submit their ACTS reporting. The article below has been updated to reflect this update.
A federal court judge on Tuesday extended a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its ACTS reporting deadline until April 6, but solely for public institutions within the 17 states named in a lawsuit against the Department of Education (ED). For institutions that don’t fall into this category, their deadline to submit ACTS reporting is Tuesday, March 31.
Earlier this month, 17 Democratic attorneys general sued ED and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), arguing that the department’s ACTS reporting requirement was rushed and created a “considerable” burden for institutions. As part of the initial ACTS reporting requirement, institutions were required to submit the past seven years of student application data by Wednesday, March 18.
Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts responded to this lawsuit and issued a temporary restraining order, preventing ED from enforcing its March 18 deadline. This initial restraining order applied to all institutions, regardless if their state was included in the lawsuit, as confirmed by the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), and extended the ACTS reporting deadline through March 25.
After a hearing on Tuesday between ED and the 17 states, Saylor extended the temporary restraining order against ED, blocking the department from enforcing its ACTS reporting deadline through Monday, April 6. However, as Saylor noted in his decision, this extension only applies to public institutions within the 17 states included in the lawsuit against ED.
Those states include Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
And for institutions that aren’t public and/or aren’t located within the 17 states included in the lawsuit, the deadline to submit their ACTS reporting was set for Wednesday, March 25, but NCES extended it to March 31. It’s also important to note that earlier in the month, institutions were able to request an extension to submit their ACTS reporting until April 8 if they met two conditions and submitted the request by March 18.
As part of this lawsuit, NASFAA, the American Council on Education, and other higher education organizations filed an amicus brief outlining several concerns about ED’s motive and process in obtaining this data.
For example, one concern listed in the brief states that ACTS reporting creates an enormous new burden on institutions, and that producing the extensive data required by ACTS has and will continue to severely strain institutional time and resources.
Additionally, the organizations stress that the implementation of ACTS reporting has been rushed, arguing that ED has failed to engage with commenters, and the government has acted without statutory authority in implementing ACTS.
ACTS reporting also calls for data that may not exist or be practicable for institutions to submit, the organizations argued. Additionally, ED hasn’t sufficiently addressed serious privacy concerns, the organizations warned, noting that the ACTS data is disaggregated across so many categories that the resulting data cells will, in some cases, contain only a handful of students or even a single individual.
“For nearly four decades, the Department of Education has administered IPEDS through a careful, collaborative process that has ensured data is reliable, consistent, and useful,” the amicus brief reads. “ACTS abandons this process. The result is a survey of unprecedented scope on an unrealistic and ultimately harmful timeline, that leaves unanswered questions around risks to student privacy, and that will produce data of questionable quality and reliability.”
A final decision on the legality of ACTS reporting has yet to be made by the court. Stay tuned to Today’s News for more updates on ACTS reporting.
Publication Date: 3/26/2026
Justine C | 3/26/2026 11:25:32 AM
Dept of Ed has access to all of the previous files submitted, so has all of this data already. Wasted time, effort and money from hundreds of offices across the country versus checking your own database.
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