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 Hill reports.
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 listed 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.”
