The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late on Friday in a sharply worded decision.
US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to the university based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.
The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, pay $1.2bn to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.
It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.
In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke’, ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”
“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice-president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of pre-eminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.
She added: “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”
At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights probes, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the first amendment and 10th amendment”.
Messages sent to the White House and the US Department of Justice after hours on Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.
The president of the University of California, James B Milliken, has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.
UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance and academic freedom of the university”.
The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment”, among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.
The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50m and Columbia University for $221m.
Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke’”.
Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of plaintiffs’ members under the first amendment”.
She cited efforts to force the UC schools to screen international students based on “’anti-western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.
Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.
His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students.
