Trump administration drops appeal over its $1.2B demand from UC system

Dive Brief:

The Trump administration agreed to drop an appeal last week against a federal court’s preliminary injunction that blocked its mass grant cancellations and efforts to extract monetary penalties and policy changes from the University of California. 
A district judge in November found that the federal government unlawfully froze hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants to University of California, Los Angeles and sought a fine upwards of $1 billion from the UC system. 
Under the agreement, the administration can still pursue a voluntary resolution with UC as part of its civil rights investigations if it follows all the statutory requirements and processes outlined in the relevant laws.

Dive Insight:

Dropping the appeal represents another legal setback for the administration as it targets high-profile colleges under civil rights laws, a strategy that has elsewhere — including at Columbia and Northwestern universities — resulted in deals with monetary penalties and policy changes attached.

In a statement late last week, the UCLA Faculty Association said the administration’s appeal withdrawal was “a major victory for UC, for higher education, and for US democracy.”

A coalition of UC unions and faculty groups sued the administration in September, shortly after the Trump administration pursued a $1.2 billion penalty from the system to settle the investigations and release $584 million in research funds. 

Along with the financial penalty, the administration also sought for UC to implement several policies, such as protest restrictions, an end to gender-inclusive policies, and the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

The government’s moves followed the U.S. Department of Justice’s conclusion that UCLA violated civil rights law, deeming it didn’t adequately respond to campus antisemitism. The administration primarily cited UCLA’s decision to allow a 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment to remain on campus for almost a week out of free speech concerns before calling in the police to disband it. 

Reporting from ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education later found that administration appointees pressured federal lawyers to find evidence at UC to back a “preordained conclusion” that the system illegally tolerated antisemitism.

In their complaint, UC unions and faculty groups argued the administration violated the Constitution and ignored the many legal requirements the government must follow when pursuing civil rights investigations. 

In November, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin agreed. 

In her ruling, she described a “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding” aimed at “forcing them to change their ideological tune.” 

At the time, Lin, a Biden appointee, blocked the federal government from using civil rights investigations to freeze UC grant money without following the required statutory steps. She also blocked the government from seeking fines or conditioning its grants on measures that would violate recipients’ speech rights. 

After appealing the ruling in January, the Trump administration has now agreed to withdraw that appeal. 

Its agreement details what the government can and can’t do going forward. 

What it can’t do is follow the playbook outlined by Lin last year. That includes canceling research grants en masse before demanding a large payment, according to Lin’s prior ruling, which was cited in court documents last week. She also wrote at the time that Title VI and Title IX don’t authorize those types of penalties. 

Title VI refers to the civil rights law barring discrimination by federally funded institutions based on race, color or national origin, while Title IX bans sex-based discrimination. Both have proscriptions for investigating and penalizing institutions for noncompliance.

Those include giving institutions the opportunity to voluntarily comply and offering them a hearing. The federal government must also file a report justifying its actions with relevant legislative committees. 

The Trump administration agreed to end its appeal if Lin indicated she would modify her order. In the new language added to the injunction, Lin spelled out that the administration must follow all legally required processes should it pursue a voluntary resolution with the UC system and only seek remedies “consistent with” civil rights laws.