- US judge rules that Trump’s actions violated Harvard’s free-speech rights
- Harvard accused Trump of retaliation over hiring and teaching control
- Three other Ivy League schools settled with Trump administration over similar issues
BOSTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2 billion in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House’s multi-front conflict with the nation’s oldest and richest university.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school became a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at U.S. universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies.
Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was to cancel hundreds of grants awarded to university researchers on the grounds that the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
Harvard sued, arguing the Trump administration was retaliating against it in violation of its free-speech rights after it refused to meet officials’ demands that it cede control over who it hires and who it teaches.
Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said the Republican president was right to combat antisemitism and that Harvard was “wrong to tolerate hateful behavior as long as it did.”
But she said fighting antisemitism was not the administration’s true aim and that officials wanted to pressure Harvard to accede to its demands in violation of its free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
So if someone “unlawfully” does something, what do we call that, Reuters? No googling!
No? No idea huh. Yeah.
Harvard sued, arguing the Trump administration was retaliating against it in violation of its free-speech rights after it refused to meet officials’ demands that it cede control over who it hires and who it teaches.
Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said the Republican president was right to combat antisemitism and that Harvard was “wrong to tolerate hateful behavior as long as it did.”
But she said fighting antisemitism was not the administration’s true aim and that officials wanted to pressure Harvard to accede to its demands in violation of its free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
I don’t know if the requirements used by judicial review of executive actions are the same as they are for legislative actions, but for the First Amendment, the standard for judicial review of legislative actions applied is strict scrutiny:
In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a “compelling state interest”. The government must also demonstrate that the law is “narrowly tailored” to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the “least restrictive means” to achieve that purpose. Failure to meet this standard will result in striking the law as unconstitutional.
Strict scrutiny is the highest and most stringent standard of judicial review in the United States and is part of the levels of judicial scrutiny that US courts use to determine whether a constitutional right or principle should give way to the government’s interest against observance of the principle.
I’d guess “yes, the bar for executive actions and legislative actions are the same”, because otherwise, there’d be a pretty substantial loophole. And the above text says “law or regulation”, and regulations are from the executive branch (the Brits know what we in the US call “regulation” as “secondary legislation”). If so, I’d guess that it’s probably pretty safe to say that this ruling was going to be a pretty sure one.
Wow it took this long? Fucking head scratcher holy shit
Like Trumpstein cares about committing crime?
Release the Trumpstein files!
Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said the Republican president was right to combat antisemitism and that Harvard was “wrong to tolerate hateful behavior as long as it did.”
Sigh.
