Federal Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Lawsuit Seeking Harvard's Admissions Records
A Boston judge threw out the Justice Department's suit to force Harvard to hand over years of applicant data, the latest courtroom loss for the administration's campaign against the university.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by President Donald Trump's administration that sought to force Harvard University to turn over records for an investigation into whether the school continues to consider race in its student admissions, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston rejected the Justice Department's case, which Harvard has contended was filed as part of a broader campaign by the administration against the Ivy League school.
The Justice Department filed the case in February, arguing that Harvard was not complying with investigations into whether it is following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling rejecting race-conscious admissions programs. The administration contends that the Justice Department and the Department of Education need years of applicant-level admissions data to determine whether race remains a factor, and it brought the claim under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination in education programs that receive federal funds.
Harvard's lawyers countered that the government sued without first taking the legally required steps aimed at securing the university's voluntary compliance, and that the records demanded include sensitive data on thousands of high school students who sought admission. They argued the suit was filed to retaliate against Harvard for refusing demands that it overhaul its governance, hiring and academic programs, and noted it came after the president announced in early February that he was ending settlement talks and wanted $1 billion in damages from Harvard, which he said had, in Reuters' quotation of his words, "been, for a long time, behaving very badly."
The dismissal is the latest in a run of courtroom setbacks for the administration's pressure campaign against the Cambridge, Massachusetts university. Harvard has already secured rulings from other judges rejecting efforts to terminate over $2 billion in its grants, to block the school from hosting international students, and to sue it for allegedly failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.
