\n<\/p>\n
In the nearly seven months since President Trump took office again, academic associations, faculty unions, researchers and other groups have used the legal system to push back on the administration\u2019s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government.<\/p>\n
So far, district and appeals courts have largely suggested that the executive branch\u2019s actions are unconstitutional and ruled in favor of university advocates, handing down preliminary injunctions, restraining orders and a few final judgments that have blocked the Trump administration\u2019s goals. But based on the few cases that have reached the Supreme Court, some higher education experts worry the tide may be turning, and the high court\u2019s conservative majority will ultimately side with the president.<\/p>\n
The lawsuits challenged bans on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; the administration\u2019s crackdown on international students; the termination of thousands of grants; and the dismantling of the Department of Education.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is that when the administration tries to impose a whole new set of rules and regulations based upon their particular ideology\u00a0\u2026 the courts are saying, \u2018Wait\u2019 or \u2018No,\u2019 until it gets to the Supreme Court,\u201d said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a teachers\u2019 union that has filed multiple lawsuits against Trump and notched a few victories. <\/p>\n
An Inside Higher Ed <\/em>analysis of more than 40 lawsuits against the administration that are related to higher ed found that district judges have ruled against the executive branch in nearly two-thirds of the cases. Almost a quarter have yet to be decided. Of those in which a judge has ruled, 18\u00a0have been appealed, and only two were overturned. In both instances when the district court was overruled, it had to do with reversing injunctions that prevented the Trump administration from canceling grants based in part on the president\u2019s executive order against DEI. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a separate but similar case. <\/p>\n Nine cases have yet to receive a decision from an appeals court.<\/p>\n For more updates on litigation against the administration, go to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> revamped lawsuit tracker. The searchable database will be updated regularly.<\/p>\n Of the cases Inside Higher Ed <\/em>analyzed, the most frequent issue at hand was grant cuts, at 14 cases, followed by the Education Department\u2019s reduction in force at eight. <\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the actions the administration is taking are very clearly being defined by the courts as patently illegal. They\u2019re outside of the established law and they exceed executive authority,\u201d said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, which has sued the administration several times to challenge a proposed cap on reimbursements for indirect research expenses that would cost universities millions.<\/p>\n Few cases that Inside Higher Ed<\/em> is tracking have reached the Supreme Court, but so far the justices have overturned lower court rulings in three, allowing the Education Department to proceed with mass layoffs and to cut millions in grants for teacher training. They haven\u2019t reached a decision in the other two cases, which are challenging grant cuts at the National Institutes of Health. <\/p>\n Some worry that rulings from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court could be driven by party alignment more than the law. Fansmith said he was certainly concerned by the court\u2019s rulings so far but was hesitant to call them an \u201cinterjection of partisan politics.\u201d <\/p>\n He noted that the rulings have come from the court\u2019s shadow docket. This means they have made their decisions outside of the traditional case procedures with limited briefings, no oral argument and often no detailed explanations. <\/p>\n For example, when it comes to the case challenging the Education Department\u2019s layoffs, Fansmith said that the lawyers he\u2019s talked to are \u201csort of confounded by the decision.\u201d The justices didn\u2019t offer an opinion on whether the department can legally fire half its employees, but did allow the administration to proceed with the process while the courts work through the case. <\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s sort of a split decision in some ways; the merits haven\u2019t yet been resolved finally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But the odds of the court making a final judgment that brings back the employees seems unlikely, some legal experts have said. And Weingarten noted that even if they do hear the cases this fall and make a final decision next spring, the damage will have been done.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is that when you start talking about medical and scientific research, the moment that those things get stopped, there is irreparable damage and it\u2019s hard to recreate them,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Trump administration is really hurting what was an anchoring principle of American enterprise and innovation\u00a0\u2026 that research has really been suffocated and used as leverage for the Trump administration to get its ideological whims adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, many different plaintiffs\u2014including Democratic attorneys general\u2014continue to push back against the Trump administration\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n Massachusetts AG Andrea Joy Campbell, who has challenged the president in multiple suits, believes that Trump and his cabinet have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use \u201cunlawful abuses of power\u201d to limit academic freedom. And as long as they continue to do so, she added, Democratic leaders will keep taking matters to court. <\/p>\n \u201cState attorneys general have the power to fight back to uphold the rule of law and protect our young people\u2014and that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Campbell wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cWe\u2019ve achieved significant victories in the vast majority of our cases, and we will continue to hold the line because our children and the future of our democracy depend on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal group that has represented plaintiffs in a number of cases, also chimed in, saying the Trump-Vance \u201cassault\u201d on education will continue to be \u201cmet with force.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese victories show just how essential higher education is to our democracy and why protecting it from political interference will remain a core part of our work,\u201d said Skye Perryman, the group\u2019s president and CEO. <\/p>\n She added that while the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to overturn some cases was \u201cincredibly disappointing,\u201d it\u2019s not the end.<\/p>\n \u201cWe win a lot, but if we\u2019re not experiencing some setbacks, we\u2019re not pushing hard enough,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n However, major concerns still loom among many higher education advocates as Trump officials continue to fight back, pushing for lawsuits to reach the Supreme Court and lambasting the district and appellate judges that rule against the executive branch, calling them \u201cactivist[s]\u201d for disagreeing with the president.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference in May. <\/p>\n Leavitt\u2019s comments were related to court decisions blocking certain immigration policies, but Madi Biedermann, press secretary for the Education Department, has also criticized judges that rule against Trump. <\/p>\n In May, Biedermann called a district court judge who blocked the department\u2019s mass layoffs a \u201cfar-left judge,\u201d adding that he \u201cdramatically overstepped his authority\u201d and had \u201ca political ax to grind.\u201d<\/p>\n Weingarten, on the other hand, says it\u2019s Trump and the conservative Supreme Court that are thwarting academic freedom and violating constitutional rights for political power.<\/p>\n What we\u2019ve seen is \u201cmore the sign of an autocrat that tries to control as opposed to people who believe in freedom,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s all very, very dangerous for the future of America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the nearly seven months since President Trump took office again, academic associations, faculty unions, researchers and other groups have used the legal system to push back on the administration\u2019s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government. So far, district and appeals courts have largely suggested that the executive branch\u2019s actions are unconstitutional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[233,9015,569,319,495,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-15444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-agenda","9":"tag-blocking","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-federal","12":"tag-higher","13":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}