Judge Orders Restoration Of Some Of UCLA's Suspended Federal Grants

Forbes

a day ago

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has ordered the Trump administration to restore a portion of the federal grants it had suspended for the University of California, Los Angeles earlier this month.
The ruling represents a partial, if only temporary, victory for the university in its dispute with the government over allegations that it had violated various civil rights laws.
In her order on Tuesday, Lin ruled that the National Science Foundation had violated a temporary restraining order she had issued on June 23 covering grants to University of California researchers from the EPA, NSF, or NEH.
At that time, Lin enjoined those agencies from 'giving effect to any grant termination that results in the termination of funding… where the termination was communicated by means of a form termination notice that does not provide a grant-specific explanation for the termination that states the reason for the change to the original award decision and considers the reliance interests at stake.'
Lin found that NSF had violated that order by suspending funding for UCLA research, and she ordered that all suspended grants from the agency between July 30 and Aug. 12 be restored.
The ruling appears to cover about 300 NSF grants, representing a sizable proportion of the $584 million in federal awards the administration had frozen at UCLA. Grants from the National Institutes of Health are not included in her new ruling.
Attorneys for the government had argued that the recent UCLA funding freeze was an 'indefinite suspension,' making it distinguishable from the grant 'terminations' that Lin had prohibited with her ruling in June.
However, Lin dismissed that logic as mere semantics, writing 'suspensions differ from a termination in name only.' She added, 'NSF may have re-labeled its action a suspension, but it is a distinction without a difference in this case. After all, a terminated grant can be reinstated, just as a suspension can be 'lifted.' And a suspension, if it is of indefinite length, is functionally identical to a termination from the researcher's perspective.'
Last week, the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay $1 billion and make changes in various campus policies and rules as a way to resolve the government's charges that the institution had committed civil rights violations and practiced illegal affirmative action. That payment would have allowed the university to regain access to its grant money.
UCLA finds itself as the first high-profile public institution to have its research funding threatened by the government over what many higher education leaders believe is a by-now-familiar strategy that relies on questionable charges and coercive tactics. Columbia University has negotiated a $200+ million settlement with the administration, an approach that Brown University also followed with a $50 million payment. Harvard University and Cornell University are reportedly still in negotiations with the government over potential settlements.
UC System President James Milliken responded that UC was 'reviewing' the administration's demands, adding last week that '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.' Milliken also said the university 'offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission.'
However, the UCLA dispute has quickly escalated into political theater. California Governor Gavin Newsom said "Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to kneecap America's #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until @UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom," in an August 9 post on X. "California won't bow to Trump's disgusting political extortion," he added.
Yesterday the Trump team fired back. "Bring it on, Gavin," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when she was asked about Newsom's response to the government's demands of UCLA.
"This administration is well within its legal right to do this, and we want to ensure that our colleges and our universities are respecting the 1st Amendment rights and the religious liberties of students on their campuses and UCLA has failed to do that, and I have a whole list of examples that I will forward to Gavin Newsom's press office, if he hasn't seen them himself," Leavitt said.