Trump can’t levy antisemitism fines against University of California, judge rules

A federal judge has indefinitely barred the Trump administration from leveling a fine in excess of $1 billion against the University of California system for failures in addressing campus antisemitism.

Calling the administration’s strong-arming of the UC system “coercive and retaliatory,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled that federal investigators had failed to follow standard protocol for Title VI civil rights investigations.

Lin’s preliminary injunction came as the UC system continues to negotiate a planned settlement with the administration related to antisemitism investigations.

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Much of the Trump administration’s case against UC involves UCLA, which in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks became a hotbed of campus conflicts over Israel. Student protesters barred “Zionists” from entering certain sections of campus; brawls also broke out with pro-Israel counter-protesters.

The university settled with a group of Jewish students this summer, but Trump has continued to push aggressive fines over the objections of a contingent of its Jewish community.

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A growing number of other universities, including, most recently, Cornell and the University of Virginia, have also signed deals with Trump to preserve federal funding and end antisemitism investigations. UC leaders have said the Trump-imposed fines are an existential threat to the school. A federal judge had previously ordered the reversal of Trump’s funding freeze to Harvard for similar stated reasoning around antisemitism.

University staffers and academic groups had sued the administration, saying that Trump’s actions were already having a punishing effect on their First Amendment concerns.

“Rooting out antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal,” Lin wrote in her decision. “However, the unrebutted evidence shows that the Task Force Agencies and the Funding Agencies have gone well beyond that stated purpose.”

Lin continued, “The record shows that Defendants engaged in a concerted policy to use allegations of antisemitism to justify funding cancellations, when their intent is to coerce universities into purging disfavored ‘left’ and ‘woke’ viewpoints from their campuses and replace them with views that the Administration favors.”

In a New York Times story this week about staffers who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department, a former lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, Ejaz Baluch, said his colleagues found that pro-Israel professors at UCLA were harassed and the school’s complaint process was flawed. But Baluch felt the fine sought by the administration was disproportionate. “We thought, $1 billion? They are making that up out of thin air,” said Baluch. “There is no way the damages we found added up to anything like that amount.”

Lin’s ruling also came amid a growing antisemitism controversy on another UC campus. UC Berkeley protesters last week chanted “Zionists out” and “Free Palestine,” with some wearing keffiyehs, as part of a larger demonstration against an event staged by right-wing group Turning Point USA, the group founded by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. At least four people were arrested during the protests, with injuries also reported. One Jewish UC Berkeley student told the Jewish News of Northern California she was targeted with antisemitic taunts from protesters.

On Monday the Justice Department and the FBI launched an investigation into the protests.