Harvard College ("Harvard") secured a significant victory in its effort to resist the influence of federal government policy preferences on its academic programming and governance on September 3, 2025, as the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a permanent injunction barring federal funding cuts in retaliation for exercising its First Amendment rights. The court also granted summary judgment to Harvard on its claims for First Amendment retaliation and violation of Title VI and the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA").
The ruling is a significant development in the Trump Administration's efforts to influence university governance and policy – particularly related to diversity-related initiatives – under the stated purpose of combatting antisemitism. Harvard's case is unique as, unlike institutions such as Brown University and Columbia University, Harvard chose not to settle and modify policies in an effort to maintain federal funding but took its fight to court instead.
What You Need to Know:
- On April 14, 2025, the federal government froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts due to alleged failures to combat antisemitism and a month later, the Secretary of Education stated Harvard would "cease to be a publicly funded institution."
- Harvard sued the government, claiming that the funding cuts violated its right to free speech and constituted retaliation for Harvard refusing to meet the Trump Administration's demands to overhaul its academic programs and governance.
- A federal district court granted summary judgment to Harvard on its First Amendment retaliation, Title VI, and APA claims challenging the government's orders freezing its funding, and issued a permanent injunction against similar actions.
- The decision rewards Harvard's strategy of fighting funding restrictions as opposed to other universities settling with the government and making policy changes to ensure continued funding.
Following Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, countless American universities experienced increased tension, including violence aimed at Jewish students. Many institutions, such as Harvard, responded by making policy changes to combat bias and ensure a safe environment for all students. In February 2025, the Department of Justice formed a federal task force comprising representatives from the Department of Education ("ED") and other agencies to investigate civil rights violations and antisemitism related to the attack. That task force issued demands to, among others, Harvard, to make reforms in order to "maintain" a "financial relationship with the federal government." Harvard rejected the demands, and quickly received funding termination letters from a number of federal agencies, including the ED and National Institutes of Health. Harvard sued, asserting the funding cuts violated its rights under the First Amendment, Title VI, and the APA.
The government and Harvard filed cross-motions for summary judgment, and Judge Allison D. Burroughs issued an opinion and order on September 3, 2025. Although the judge observed that Harvard "was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did," she ultimately granted summary judgment to Harvard on the majority of its claims and issued a permanent injunction barring the government from:
Issuing any other termination, fund freezes, stop work orders, or otherwise withholding payment on existing grants or other federal funding, or refusing to award future grants, contracts, or other federal funding to Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights, or on any purported grounds of discrimination without compliance with the terms of Title VI.
With respect to First Amendment retaliation, the court found the government had retaliated against Harvard by terminating its funding based on disagreements with the institution's exercise of its academic freedom. Among other facts, the court noted that the swift termination of funding "ostensibly motivated by antisemitism, was made before they learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response," indicating the focus on antisemitism was "at best . . . arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual." The court observed that the government's communications "unambiguously link[] funding to the demand that Harvard rebalance viewpoints on campus," and public comments from the Administration declared Harvard did not deserve federal funding because it, among other things, "hir[ed] almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and 'birdbrains'" – with no mention of antisemitism.
Further, the court noted the existence of "numerous exhibits and undisputed facts" that "speak to Defendants' retaliatory motive in terminating Harvard's funding," including the President characterizing Harvard's refusal to settle as a "fight" and stating that "every time [Harvard] fight[s], they lose another $250 million." This supported a finding that the government "impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government's demands." In the end, the court found the government's claim that Harvard's expression of its Constitutional rights was unrelated to the funding terminations "does not square with the government's communications regarding its decision."
In addition to the retaliation claim, the court also granted summary judgment to Harvard on its First Amendment claims based on theories of unconstitutional conditions and unconstitutional coercion. The court's ruling with respect to the unconstitutional conditions claim was based on "the impropriety of conditioning Harvard's federal funding . . . on Harvard's realigning its campus to better reflect a viewpoint favored by the government." With respect to the unconstitutional coercion theory, the court noted that because the government required Harvard "to rebalance and alter their speech to save Harvard's funding," the University was entitled to summary judgment on this ground as well.
Harvard also secured summary judgment on its Title VI claims. Title VI prohibits funding recipients from engaging in discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. The statute details specific procedures agencies must follow before "terminating, or refusing to grant or continue, assistance" based on failure to comply with Title VI requirements. Here, the court found no evidence that the government did so, citing a lack of notice of noncompliance, hearing, or report to Congress, among other procedural steps mandated by Title VI.
