A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to restore about a third of research grants to the University of California, Los Angeles by next week.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled the federal government’s funding cuts late last month violated her June preliminary injunction that ordered the return of federal funding to UCLA. The latest ruling only applies to some 300 grants frozen by the National Science Foundation between July 30 and Aug. 12. About 800 UCLA grants, totaling $584 million, were gifted by the independent agency, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Energy.
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“NSF’s actions violate the Preliminary Injunction,” Lin wrote in the 12-page order.
Tuesday’s ruling handed another win to six UC researchers who filed the lawsuit challenging the grant terminations.
The plaintiffs take issue with the administration’s categorization of the funding cuts as “suspensions” instead of “terminations” to avoid the court’s order. The government argued it treated the funding cuts as “suspensions,” allowing universities such as Harvard University and Columbia University to take “corrective actions” or enter settlement agreements. The judge finds no difference between the terms.
“Though there may be situations where a ‘termination’ and ‘suspension’ are not the same thing, there is no principled difference between a ‘termination’ and the immediate, indefinite, and ‘final’ ‘suspension’ of funding in this context,” the San Francisco-based judge wrote. “The suspensions have the same effect, and are based on the same type of deficient explanations, as the original terminations.”
Harvard is reportedly nearing a $500 million settlement with the Trump administration to begin restoring the school’s $2.2 billion in funding that was frozen over antisemitism allegations on campus. The deal would come after Columbia reached a similar settlement, totaling $221 million, to resolve a number of investigations into violations of federal antidiscrimination laws, particularly those related to antisemitism.
The Trump administration is actively pursuing a $1 billion settlement with UCLA, substantially more than Columbia’s. UCLA has yet to make a decision on this development.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vowed to sue the administration over the proposed settlement demand. The White House responded aggressively, telling the governor to “bring it on.”
WHITE HOUSE SAYS ‘BRING IT ON, GAVIN!’ AS FIGHT OVER $1 BILLION UCLA PAYMENT INTENSIFIES
“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 First Amendment rights and the religious liberties of students on their campuses,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “UCLA has failed to do that, and I have a whole list of examples I will forward to Gavin Newsom’s press office if he hasn’t seen them himself.”
The Trump administration is ordered to comply with Lin’s order regarding UCLA by Aug. 19. Otherwise, it will have to explain why the funding was not restored. The federal government may appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit.