University of California students, professors sue Trump administration

A group consisting of University of California (UC) students, faculty, staff and labor unions is suing the Trump administration, alleging violations of their academic freedom and free speech rights. 

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in US District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the Trump administration of attempting to “commandeer this public university system and to purge from its campuses viewpoints with which the President and his administration” disagree. 

Last month, the administration fined the University of California, Los Angeles $1.2 billion and halted federal research funding after the Justice Department (DOJ) found the school violated federal civil rights law. A judge, though, ordered the administration to restore a portion of that $584 million in funding on Aug. 15.

The DOJ, in its July report, accused UCLA of “acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

The lawsuit filed Tuesday, however, alleges that the administration’s actions follow a similar “playbook” it has utilized to quash dissent at other private universities, including Harvard, Brown and Columbia. 

According to the lawsuit, in a letter sent to UCLA on Aug. 8, the Trump administration list numerous demands for UCLA in exchange for the university’s federal research funding to be unfrozen. The requirements include UCLA banning demonstrations in certain areas of campus, sharing disciplinary records of international students with the federal government, eliminating any racial preferences in hiring and any race-based scholarships and changing its policies towards transgender students in athletics, public spaces and health care.

The administration also demanded that UCLA appoint a “resolution monitor” to oversee campus monitors, and said that the administration has the authority to appoint an official to the post “if UCLA and the administration cannot reach agreement on who should be appointed as that monitor.”

These required policy changes, which the lawsuit claims have already begun, “have had a widespread chilling effect,” on students, faculty, academic and staff employees. The demands, if fully implemented, would reduce infringe on the free speech and association rights of the plaintiffs and decrease the diversity of UC’s student body. 

“Defendants’ threats and coercive conduct have caused a pervasive sense of fear and intimidation among UC faculty, students, academic employees, and staff employees, who have seen the UC already begin to alter its policies and practices seemingly in capitulation to the Trump administration,” the lawsuit states. 

The UC system is made up of 10 campuses in Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. The lawsuit also notes that the system also consists of five medical centers and numerous research laboratories and institutes. 

The Hill has reached out to the White House, DOJ and UC system for comment.