The U.S. Department of Justice is appealing the dismissal of its antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard University, seeking to revive a case in which the government wants to recover nearly $1 billion in federal grants over the university’s alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students.
The department filed its appeal on Thursday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, challenging U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns’s Aug. 13 dismissal of the case.
The lawsuit, which the federal government filed in March, alleges that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to adequately address antisemitism and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The government alleges that students were harassed, assaulted and intimidated on campus and that Harvard failed to enforce its rules against those responsible.
The Justice Department is seeking to compel Harvard to comply with Title VI and recover federal funds it says the university received while violating the law. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Harvard was set to receive more than $2.6 billion through active grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to the Justice Department.
Stearns ruled that the government had not sufficiently shown that Harvard remained in violation of Title VI after the university was formally notified of the allegations in June 2025.
The judge described the incidents cited by the government as “too isolated and episodic” to establish “a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.” He noted that the lawsuit focused largely on incidents from the 2023-24 academic year and cited only three incidents from March 2025.
Stearns also said Title VI enforcement is intended to bring institutions receiving federal funds into compliance with civil-rights law, rather than punish them for past violations.
Under the First Circuit’s briefing schedule, Justice Department lawyers will have 40 days after the appellate record is filed to submit their opening brief.
The department is separately pursuing two other Harvard-related appeals before the First Circuit, including litigation over $2.2 billion in federal funding and the university’s ability to enroll international students.
