Judge Halts Trump Confiscation of UCLA Federal Grants

A US federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release some of the taxpayer-funded grants and contracts it confiscated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as punishment for allegedly violating the civil rights of Jewish students by exposing them to antisemitism.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration impounded a reported $584 million from UCLA’s coffers, citing numerous complaints of antisemitism on the campus — some of which the institution recently settled in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. The move came only days after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.

On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Rita Lin, appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden in 2023, ruled that the measure violated a previous preliminary injunction she granted the University of California (UC) system in June when other grants were taken from it by the National Science Foundation (NSF), over which the administration wields authority.

“NSF’s action violate the preliminary injunction,” Lin wrote in a 12-page judgement. “NSF communicated the suspensions by means of a form letter that failed to provide the requisite grant-specific reason for halting funding, and that failed to adequately consider grant-specific interests, including the reliance interests. Therefore … NSF’s suspension of the grants at issue here is vacated.”

Some one-third of the $584 million is due for restoration by Aug. 19.

In July, UCLA agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit which accused it of fostering a discriminatory and antisemitic learning environment during the 2023-2024 academic year.

The sum includes $2.33 million in donations for a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Academic Engagement Network (AEN), and UCLA’s Hillel International campus chapter; another $320,000 will be awarded to the UCLA Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. The accusers — Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian, who were UCLA students at the time of filing, as well as UCLA Health Dr. Kamran Shamsa — will split the remaining $3.6 million.

Filed in June 2024, the suit excoriated UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up. According to the complaint, students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.

Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality.” In doing so, it continued, UCLA allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.

Numerous antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the spring encampment, the complaint added.

Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the complaint said, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”

Since coming into office in January, the Trump administration has leveraged universities’ reliance on federal funding, to the tune of billions of dollars, to extract major policy concessions on campus antisemitism, transgender participation in sports, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In July, Columbia University resolved to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secured the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration froze to pressure the institution to address the issue.

Commenting on the agreement, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said it represents a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”

Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practices, and [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI] programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race” — which, if true, could mark the opening of a new era in American higher education.”

Choosing a similar path, Brown University agreed a week later to pay $50 million dollars and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism. The government rewarded Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million it froze in April.

Per the agreement, shared by the university, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”

Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.

Another major provision shutters any Brown initiatives which may advance the aims of the DEI movement.

“Brown shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts,” the agreement continues. “Brown will cease any provision of benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association, or element within the entire Brown University system.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.