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A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday. The legal action sought to compel Harvard University to surrender records for an investigation into whether the institution still considers race in student admissions.
Procedural Grounds for Dismissal
US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston rejected the lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice. Harvard argued that the case formed part of a wider campaign by the Republican president’s administration against the Ivy League university.
The judge emphasized that his ruling was based on narrow, procedural grounds. He noted that the decision did not determine whether the Justice Department and the US Department of Education could eventually demand data on thousands of high school students who applied to Harvard.
However, Joun, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, agreed with Harvard’s argument that the Justice Department initiated the lawsuit without exhausting all required legal steps to obtain the university’s voluntary compliance for the applicant-level data.
Writing in his decision, Joun stated that the complaint failed to mention that the DOJ informed Harvard of its intended litigation if the university did not comply, nor did it specify the exact failure identified.
Context of Federal Investigations
Harvard has emerged as a primary target of the administration’s initiative to utilize federal funding and government authority to push for changes at universities that Trump contends are controlled by “radical left” ideologies.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution previously obtained rulings from other judges that halted the administration’s attempts to cancel over $2 billion in grants, prevent the university from enrolling international students, and sue the school over allegations of failing to safeguard Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.
The Justice Department initiated the lawsuit before Joun in February, claiming Harvard failed to cooperate with investigations examining whether the school is adhering to the US Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling. That Supreme Court decision involved Harvard and struck down race-conscious admissions programs previously used to increase minority student enrollment.
The administration maintained that it required years of applicant-level data to evaluate whether race continues to influence Harvard’s admissions decisions and whether the institution violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in educational programs.
Recently released data from Harvard indicated that Black undergraduate enrollment decreased for the third consecutive year following the Supreme Court ban on race-conscious admissions, declining to 9.3% for the class of 2030 compared to 11.5% for the class of 2029.
Retaliation Claims and Next Steps
Harvard attorneys argued that the government filed the lawsuit in retaliation against the university for rejecting demands to modify its governance, hiring practices, and academic programs to match the administration’s platform.
Legal counsel for the university pointed out that the lawsuit came after Trump stated in early February that settlement negotiations were over and demanded $1 billion in damages from Harvard, accusing the school of behaving very badly for a long time.
In his Monday ruling, Joun reiterated that he was not deciding whether Harvard engaged in discrimination or whether the university must eventually hand over the requested data to the federal agencies. The Justice Department retains the option to file a similar lawsuit in the future if proper administrative procedures are fulfilled first.
