Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Freezing Harvard Funds
(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP photo)
Federal District Court Judge Allison Burroughs issued an injunction on Wednesday blocking the Trump administration from freezing Harvard’s federal grants and funding. Burroughs shredded the administration for using allegations of fostering anti-Semitism on campus as “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
Burroughs summed up Harvard’s arguments against the Trump administration, which she found in favor of. “Plaintiffs collectively challenge the decision to freeze and then terminate the grants on three primary grounds, contending that (1) the funding decisions were made in response to Harvard’s refusal to capitulate to Defendants’ content- and viewpoint- based demands and its subsequent decision to file a lawsuit, in violation of the First Amendment.” The order added:
(2) the grant terminations did not comply with the procedural requirements of Title VI and are thus invalid; and (3) Defendants acted arbitrarily and capriciously when they froze and subsequently terminated funding to Harvard, as they failed to provide a reasoned explanation for how or why freezing and terminating funding would further the goal of ending antisemitism, to weigh the importance of the grants they sought to terminate, and to consider decades of reliance engendered through their prior practice of funding research at Harvard. Defendants’ initial and primary argument in response is that this Court lacks jurisdiction over these claims, all of which belong in the Federal Court of Claims pursuant to the Tucker Act.
Harvard sued the administration back in April after Trump pulled billions in federal funding and grants, primarily from medical research.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement at the time, adding, “The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.”
The Trump administration placed a list of demands on Harvard, as well as other universities, to have funding restored. Burroughs concluded, however, that those demands were based on partisan complaints and not grounded in reality or the law.
“In fact, a review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of the APA, the First Amendment and Title VI. Further, their actions have jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes,” she wrote.
This is a breaking story and has been updated.
