By Eniola Amadu
The University of California and its unions have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing it of using civil rights laws to suppress academic freedom and curtail free speech.
The case, filed in San Francisco, comes after the administration fined UCLA $1.2bn and froze its research funding over allegations of antisemitism and other civil rights violations.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of faculty, staff, student groups, and every labor union representing UC workers, led by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and represented by the legal group Democracy Forward.
It challenges what the plaintiffs call an unlawful pattern of abruptly cutting off federal research funds that public universities depend on.
“The blunt cudgel the Trump administration has repeatedly employed in this attack on the independence of institutions of higher education has been the abrupt, unilateral, and unlawful termination of federal research funding on which those institutions and the public interest rely,” the lawsuit states.
The administration’s proposed settlement terms with UCLA included requirements to give federal officials access to student, faculty, and staff data; release admissions and hiring information; end diversity scholarships; ban overnight campus demonstrations; and cooperate with immigration enforcement.
Neither the Department of Justice nor the UC president’s office has commented publicly on the details.
UC president James Milliken confirmed that all 10 campuses of the university system are facing investigations and other federal actions.
In a statement, he called the pressure campaign “one of the gravest threats to the University of California in our 157-year history.”
The UC system receives more than $17bn annually in federal funding, including nearly $10bn tied to Medicare and Medicaid, as well as grants for research and student aid.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has also launched dozens of investigations against K-12 districts, as the administration has pushed probes into diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, arguing they discriminate against white and Asian American students.
The case follows a precedent set this summer when Columbia University agreed to pay more than $200m to resolve government allegations of anti-discrimination violations.
That deal restored $400m in frozen research grants, and federal officials have since used it as a template for agreements with other universities.
