Judge Rules for Harvard in Grants Case

In a ruling that has major implications for colleges and universities seeking to maintain their federal grant funding, Harvard University prevailed in the initial stages of its legal challenge against the Trump Administration’s decision to freeze and then cancel over $2 billion in federal research grants based on allegations of antisemitism. However, the litigation remains far from resolved, and it is unclear when funding will be restored, given that the Administration has announced its plan to appeal the ruling.

In its decision, the court determined that the Trump Administration’s actions were unlawful under the First Amendment, Title VI, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). After examining the record, the court found that the Administration had violated Harvard’s free speech rights on numerous grounds, including retaliating against the university when it refused to agree to the government’s demands that infringed on Harvard’s autonomy and academic freedom and seeking “to force Harvard to better manifest the government’s favored worldview.”

Similarly, while the court acknowledged the importance of combating antisemitism, it ruled that the Administration’s rationale for terminating funding was pretextual, given that “nothing else in the administrative record supports Defendants’ contention that they were primarily or even substantially motivated by that goal [of combatting antisemitism] (or that cutting funding to Harvard bore any relationship to achieving that aim).”

Additionally, the court determined that the Trump Administration had violated Title VI’s procedural requirements by failing to conduct an investigation, determine noncompliance, and seek a voluntary resolution before terminating federal funding. For similar reasons, the court found that the Administration’s actions – which failed to present evidence of antisemitism, disregarded the university’s efforts to address antisemitism, and failed to consider the importance of the grants at issue – were arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.

Ultimately, the court concluded that the government “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.” As a result, the court issued in injunction to prevent the Trump Administration from seeking to impose similar demands in the future or making additional efforts to freeze or terminate federal grant funding.

For more information, please contact:
Jody Feder