Faculty, staff, student organizations and every labor union representing University of California workers filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in San Francisco, alleging the Trump administration has used civil‑rights laws and the threat of withholding federal funds to wage a campaign against the public university system that curtails academic freedom and undermines free speech.
The complaint comes weeks after the federal government fined the University of California, Los Angeles $1.2 billion and froze research funding, accusing the school of permitting antisemitism on campus and other civil‑rights violations. UCLA was the first public university targeted with a widespread funding freeze; the administration has also frozen or paused federal funding in investigations involving Harvard, Brown and Columbia.
According to the lawsuit, the administration’s proposed settlement with UCLA included demands the university says would intrude on campus autonomy: granting government access to faculty, student and staff data; releasing detailed admissions and hiring records; ending diversity scholarships; banning overnight demonstrations on university property; and cooperating with immigration enforcement. The complaint was filed by a coalition led by the American Association of University Professors and is being litigated by Democracy Forward, a legal group that has pursued other challenges to the administration’s funding actions.
“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 stated.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the office of the University of California president. UC President Michael V. Drake said in a statement that the federal government has launched investigations and other actions against all 10 UC campuses, describing the situation as “one of the gravest threats to the University of California in our 157‑year history.” He noted that the UC system receives more than $17 billion annually in federal support, including nearly $10 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funding, as well as research grants and student financial aid.
The legal action arrives amid a broader push by the administration to use control of federal funding as leverage to press for reforms at elite colleges it argues are tolerant of antisemitism or biased through diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has launched dozens of federal investigations that extend to K‑12 districts, and this summer Columbia University agreed to a $200 million settlement to resolve federal allegations that it violated antidiscrimination laws; the agreement also resulted in the restoration of more than $400 million in research grants.
Plaintiffs in the UC case contend the government is applying the Columbia settlement as a template for other institutions and that the prospect of steep financial penalties has become an expectation in settlement talks. The lawsuit challenges the legality of the funding freezes and related demands, asserting they threaten the independence of public higher education and the research that relies on federal support.
The case will proceed in federal court in San Francisco. The complaint seeks to address the funding freezes and the conditions the plaintiffs say would erode university autonomy, while the wider string of investigations and settlements continues to reshape how federal civil‑rights enforcement interacts with higher education institutions.