Judge Bars Trump Administration From Fining University of California Over Alleged Discrimination

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding and fining the University of Calfornia late Friday.

A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from fining the University of California over discrimination claims.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction late Friday barring the administration from cancelling funding and fining the University of California. According to the Associated Press, Judge Lin’s ruling means the administration cannot take any action without giving notice to affected faculty. She also ruled that the administration cannot take action without conducting a hearing, among other requirements.

Her ruling comes after the administration’s demand for the university to pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusations that the university allowed antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university targeted by the administration over civil rights violations, the AP reports.

Judge Lin said in her ruling that labor unions and other groups at UC representing faculty, students, and staff had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration engaged in a “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”

“Agency officials, as well as the President and Vice President, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.

Fine Would Devastate University of California

In August, University of California President James B. Milliken put out a statement saying that the $1 billion fine the Trump administration demanded would devastate the university.

“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department [of Justice] to protect the University and its critical research mission,” he stated. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources, and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”

The University of California isn’t the only institution that has come under fire from the Trump administration over discrimination claims. The administration also froze funding at Harvard University and Columbia University over antisemitism and discrimination allegations. A federal judge ruled later that the funding freeze at Harvard was illegal.