Educators’ unions sue Trump administration over revocation of $400 million in funding to Columbia University

By Chris Boyette, Yash Roy and Gloria Pazmino, CNN

New York (CNN) — Labor unions representing professors and other educators have sued the Trump administration over its revocation of $400 million in congressionally authorized federal research funding to Columbia University following campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war, accusing the administration of leveraging the funds to compel speech restrictions on campus and forcing the school to surrender its academic independence.

“This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students,” a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers in US District Court for New York’s Southern District said.

The lawsuit comes as dozens of colleges and universities face federal investigations for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian demonstrations that disrupted campuses across the country last spring over the war in Gaza, with Columbia University becoming the epicenter of the nationwide demonstrations.

The university has repeatedly said it will not tolerate antisemitism.

“Columbia has a fundamental obligation to protect all its students from harassment and discrimination, with special attention to historically marginalized groups including Jewish students. It must balance that obligation with another central to its mission: Columbia must create an environment that encourages free speech, dialogue, and the exchange of opposing views,” the unions’ lawsuit says. “Defendants’ actions are not calculated to help Columbia strike that careful balance. Instead, they aim to grant the federal government control over the content of campus speech and to punish the entire Columbia community because some of its members have expressed views the Trump administration disfavors.”

The suit alleges the funding cuts have already “caused severe and irreparable damage” and “hobbled crucial public health efforts including research to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, to ensure fetal health in pregnant women, and to cure cancer” in addition to other technological and scientific research.

Forty percent of Columbia University’s budget goes to patient care and research, and nearly 40% more toward instruction, according to the lawsuit.

Columbia University announced Friday a series of policy changes aimed to comply with directives from the Trump administration in hopes of reclaiming the $400 million in funding. The policy changes include a review of admissions policies, making it easier to report harassment, tightening rules about the location of protests, prohibiting masks at protests, giving campus police new arrest powers and giving the office of the provost more authority to deal with disciplinary action against students involved in protests. The university also said it would review its Middle East studies programs.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education and the General Services Administration on Monday called the Columbia moves a “positive first step.”

The new rules effectively ban protests inside and immediately outside academic buildings, and all demonstration activity is subject to the university’s antidiscrimination and anti-harassment policies.

“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” Reinhold Martin, a Columbia professor of architecture and president of the Columbia-AAUP, said in a news release. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”

The AAUP also is party to another lawsuit, along with the Middle East Studies Association, filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of union members from various colleges and universities.

The lawsuit seeks to block the “large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participated in pro-Palestinian protests.”

Trump’s executive orders on the matter are “lawless” and create “a climate of repression,” according to Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there,” Todd Wolfson, the president of Rutgers-AAUP, wrote in a statement. “They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said it is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States.

“When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that the Trump administration’s “ideological deportation” policy violates the First Amendment, but in a statement to CNN, a Department of Justice spokesperson said, “This Department makes no apologies for its efforts to defend President Trump’s agenda in court and protect Jewish Americans from vile antisemitism.”

The lawsuits come after pro-Palestinian activist and legal permanent US resident Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student protest leader, had his green card ordered revoked by the State Department, with ICE officers arresting him on March 8. Khalil, who is also married to a US citizen, has filed a lawsuit to prevent his removal.

CNN has sought comment from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the General Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of State. The White House referred to the DOJ statement.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Yash Roy and Gloria Pazmino reported from New York, and CNN’s Chris Boyette reported and wrote in Atlanta.