Labor Unions Sue Over Trump Admin Freezing $400 Million in Funding to Columbia University

The lawsuit was filed after the Ivy League school agreed to conditions for protecting Jewish students in the future.

NYPD officers arrest students as they evict a building that had been barricaded by pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, in New York City on April 30, 2024. Charly Triballeau/AFP

Organizations representing K-12 and higher education teachers asked a federal judge to restore $400 million in grants the Trump administration rescinded from Columbia University following an investigation into campus anti-Semitism.

The lawsuit, filed March 25 in New York City U.S. district court by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Association of University Professors, accuses the Department of Education and the Department of Justice of violating the First Amendment by “using funding cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.”

“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said Orion Danjuma, lead counsel for the case, in a news release issued by the Protect Democracy organization. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education from unlawful government censorship and political repression.”

The funding was revoked earlier this month following a probe into pro-Palestinian encampments, vandalism of a school building, and other disruptions last year in which Jewish students were harassed.

In addition to the $400 million cut, the Trump administration also required Columbia administrators to satisfy nine conditions in order to be eligible for future federal funding, including a student mask ban, strict supervision of the Middle East studies department, an overhaul of the judiciary process for disciplining disruptive students, an increase in “intellectual diversity,” the implementation of a clear definition of anti-Semitism, and new student recruitment and admissions protocol to weed out anti-Semitic students in future classes.

This lawsuit was filed after several cabinet members acknowledged Columbia’s progress.

“Instead of inspiring universal condemnation, the October 7 holocaust triggered a global wave of anti-Semitism. Ivy league campuses became a greenhouse for poison,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said in a March 24 news release. “President Trump has ordered his cabinet to use every constitutional tool to uproot this divisive weed. I’m glad Columbia has agreed to this first step and will begin to restore itself as a garden of tolerance, reason, compassion, and respect.”

The lawsuit also asks the court to prevent the Trump administration from enforcing any of the nine conditions that Columbia has already agreed to.

“Defendants have infringed and impermissibly burdened the constitutional rights of Columbia and its faculty and students, including Plaintiffs’ members, by imposing unconstitutional conditions on the receipt of federal funds,” court papers said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Education regarding the lawsuit.