Justice Department sues Harvard for data as it investigates how race factors into admissions

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is suing Harvard University, saying it has refused to provide admissions records that the Justice Department demanded to ensure the Ivy League school stopped using affirmative action in admissions.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Massachusetts, the Justice Department said Harvard has “thwarted” efforts to investigate potential discrimination. It accused Harvard of refusing to comply with a federal investigation and asked a judge to order the university to turn over the records.

Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said Harvard’s refusal is a red flag. “If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” Dhillon said in a statement.

A statement from Harvard said the university has been responding to the government’s requests. It said Harvard is in compliance with the Supreme Court decision barring affirmative action in admissions.

“The University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” the university said.

The suit is the latest salvo in President Donald Trump’s standoff with Harvard, which has faced billions of dollars in funding cuts and other sanctions after it rejected a list of demands from the administration last year.

Trump officials have said they’re taking action against Harvard over allegations of anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard officials say they’re facing unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to adopt the administration’s ideological views. The administration is appealing a judge’s orders that sided with Harvard in two lawsuits.

The Justice Department opened a compliance review into Harvard’s admissions practices last April on the same day the White House issued a series of sweeping demands aligned with Trump’s priorities. The agency told Harvard to hand over five years of admissions data for undergraduate applicants along with Harvard’s medical and law schools.

It asked for a trove of data including applicants’ grades, test scores, essays, extracurricular activities and admissions outcomes, along with their race and ethnicity. It asked for the data by April 25, 2025. The lawsuit said Harvard has not provided that data.

Justice Department officials said they need the data to determine whether Harvard has continued considering applicants’ race in admissions decisions. The Supreme Court barred affirmative action in admissions in 2023 after lawsuits challenged it at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Trump officials have accused colleges of continuing the practice, which the administration says discriminates against white and Asian American students.

The White House is separately pressing universities across the U.S. to providing similar data to determine whether they have continued to factor race into admissions decisions. The Education Department plans to collect more detailed admissions data from colleges after Trump signed an action suggesting schools were ignoring the Supreme Court decision.

Trump’s dispute with Harvard had appeared to be winding down last summer after the president repeatedly said they were finalizing a deal to restore Harvard’s federal funding. The deal never materialized, and Trump rekindled the conflict this month when he said Harvard must pay $1 billion as part of any deal, double what he previously demanded.

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