SFFA Files IRS Comment Citing ZIP Codes as Race Proxy in Admissions

The filing places the Treasury Department at the center of a legal and regulatory dispute over whether geography-based admissions criteria constitute a continuation of race-conscious practices the...

Students for Fair Admissions filed a formal comment letter with the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service on September 16, 2026, arguing that "geographic location" criteria listed in a proposed IRS rule on tax-exempt private schools function as a proxy for race in college admissions, according to the Washington Examiner's report on the filing.

The proposed Treasury rule in question identifies geographic location as an acceptable race-neutral criterion for determining admissions eligibility at private institutions that receive tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The SFFA comment letter contends that this classification provides a mechanism for universities to replicate the racial sorting that the Supreme Court prohibited three years ago.

The Supreme Court's June 2023 rulings in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina held that race-conscious admissions programs at those institutions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, stated that universities may not use race as a factor in admissions decisions. The opinions are on record in the official Supreme Court reporter at 600 U.S. 181 and 600 U.S. 351.

SFFA's September 16 letter, submitted during the public comment period for the Treasury proposed rule, argues that ZIP code selection correlates with racial composition at a high enough rate to constitute a de facto racial criterion. The letter does not specify a threshold correlation figure in the portions reported publicly, and the full comment letter text would need to be reviewed via the federal regulations comment portal, regulations.gov, to verify the precise statistical claims SFFA has advanced.

The use of geography as a proxy factor in admissions is not a new concern in higher education law. Researchers at MIT and Stanford published separate analyses between 2019 and 2022 documenting correlations between census tract selection and racial outcome in admissions pools. Those studies are available through the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series. Whether Treasury's proposed rule consulted those datasets is not known from currently available public records. A Freedom of Information Act request to the Treasury's Office of Tax Policy would be the appropriate instrument to determine which research informed the draft rule.

The proposed Treasury rule appears to stem from longstanding IRS authority under Revenue Ruling 71-447, which requires private schools claiming tax exemption to demonstrate they do not discriminate on the basis of race. The ruling has been enforced with varying intensity across administrations. Under the current framework, Treasury is attempting to clarify what constitutes a permissible race-neutral alternative after the 2023 Supreme Court decisions reshaped the legal landscape for higher education.

SFFA is the same organization that litigated both the Harvard and UNC cases to the Supreme Court. Its founder, Edward Blum, has been a central figure in challenges to race-conscious policies in education and voting since at least 2012, when he organized the legal team behind Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Blum's organizational funding sources are disclosed in SFFA's Form 990 filings, available through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search database.

The Treasury comment period is a formal federal rulemaking step under the Administrative Procedure Act. Comments submitted by organizations and individuals become part of the administrative record and must be addressed in any final rule. If Treasury finalizes a rule that SFFA and similar groups view as permitting race proxy factors, litigation in federal district court would be the probable next step, though no lawsuit has been filed as of September 21, 2026.

No university has publicly responded to the SFFA filing as of the publication date of this article. The Association of American Universities and the American Council on Education, both of which submitted amicus briefs in the 2023 Supreme Court cases, have not issued statements on the Treasury proposed rule that are available in public press release archives.

Several key facts remain unknown. The public record does not yet show how many universities submitted comments in support of the Treasury rule's geographic criterion language, how Treasury weighted geographic factors against other listed criteria, or whether the IRS has examined specific institutional admissions data during the rulemaking process. The full set of public comments, once the comment period closes, will be posted to regulations.gov and will constitute the primary documentary record for evaluating those questions.