Harvard Wins Ruling In Lawsuit Over $2 Billion Funding Freeze By Trump

Harvard University scored a major legal victory in its battle with the Trump administration after a court ruled that the US illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding.

The US government violated Harvard’s free speech rights and didn’t follow proper procedures when it suspended a wide range of research grants in April, according to a federal judge. The ruling on Wednesday paves the way for the funding to be released to the school. 

Harvard has been the main target of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape elite higher education, a campaign that started by accusing schools of fostering antisemitism, but has grown into a much broader attack on diversity programs and perceived political bias. The administration said it was withholding federal funding because the school failed to protect Jewish students on campus following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, among other issues. 

In her ruling, US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston said the Trump administration violated Harvard’s free-speech protections as well as US civil rights and administrative laws. But she didn’t order the government to release the funds.

The Trump administration “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 law, Burroughs wrote in an 84-page opinion. She said the focus on antisemitism at Harvard was at best “arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual.”

The US, she wrote, “impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government’s demands.” She issued the ruling as a so-called summary judgment after deciding a trial was unnecessary.

White House Spokeswoman Liz Huston called the decision “egregious” and said the administration would appeal.  

“To any fair-minded observer, it is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years,” Huston said. “Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.” 

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. 

Although the ruling is a win for Harvard and its president Alan Garber, the school’s broader clash with the administration continues. Trump has also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status. As part of a separate lawsuit, Burroughs temporarily paused the government’s efforts to bar enrollment of international students and prevent them from entering the US to study at the college. The US appealed that decision. 

Settlement Talks

Trump has said he wants “nothing less than $500 million” from Harvard in any potential settlement of the litigation. The ruling Wednesday could strengthen Harvard’s hand in the settlement talks. Several other schools have settled rather than fight in court, including Columbia University, which agreed to pay $221 million.

Harvard has warned that the combined cost of federal actions against the school, including a recently passed tax increase on endowments, could reach $1 billion a year. Garber and other administrators wrote a letter in July that said each school will cut expenditures and a hiring freeze would remain in place.

Lawyers for the university have argued that the US violated the school’s First Amendment rights by demanding it cede control and make specific changes to continue receiving money from the government. 

The US cut funding to “a broad swath of critical research without any consideration as to whether there were less restrictive alternatives” to preserve work already in place, Burroughs said in her decision.

Civil Rights 

The administration insisted it was protecting students’ civil rights, and called taxpayer funds a privilege to be earned. Lawyers for the administration said the US was allowed to cut off funding if Harvard is “no longer aligned with” government priorities. 

At a July hearing, Burroughs said it was “a little bit mind-boggling” for the US to argue that the government can terminate contracts if it disagreed with viewpoints unrelated to the subject of the grants. But Justice Department lawyers said the US can end contracts “for any policy reasons.”

In her ruling on Wednesday, Burroughs wrote that upending “the longstanding, collaborative relationship between the government and Harvard and its partner institutions without considering alternatives or articulating a connection to the problem of antisemitism sounds in arbitrariness and reeks of pretext.” 

Burroughs also rejected claims by the administration that the case was a contract dispute that should be handled by another judge, the Court of Federal Claims. She said resolving Harvard’s claims about the “free speech rights of an academic institution and its employees” involves a “bedrock constitutional principle rather than the interpretation of contract terms.”