A district judge’s decision on Friday to block the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2 billion fine as part of its proposed settlement agreement with the University of California “risks creating a dangerous separation of powers crisis,” Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS.
The decision from Rita Lin, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, came in response to a lawsuit filed in September by unions and groups representing UC professors, students and staff against the Trump administration. The suit responded to the administration freezing $584 million in federal funding.
In her order, Lin stated that the members of the organizations have “shown irreparable harm” as a result of the Trump administration’s actions. She also said that the conditions tied to restoring federal funding under the proposed settlement would violate the First Amendment, including requiring the university to bar “anti-American” foreign students.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.
Filitti told JNS that “administrations of both parties have long conditioned federal funding to advance policy priorities”, and Lin’s decision “invites courts to police motives rather than legality.”
“Judge Lin’s opinion sidesteps the obvious,” he said. “UCLA failed its Jewish students. The school allowed illegal encampments, mob blockades that barred Jewish students and open Jew-hatred to flourish with no meaningful intervention.”
“This injunction may protect schools from federal pressure, but it does nothing to safeguard the students whose rights were, and are being, violated,” he told JNS.
He added that the federal government is supposed to “enforce civil rights laws vigorously, especially when taxpayer-funded campuses have so blatantly failed to protect minority students.”
“Courts should not undermine that authority by substituting their preferences to those of the other branches of government,” Filitti said. “That doesn’t protect the Constitution, but rather it weakens the very tools needed to defend Jewish students and every other vulnerable community.”
