Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Harvard pushes back against funding cuts; sues Trump administration, agencies, (Apr 23, 2025)

By Suzanne Cosgrove

In its complaint, Harvard charges the government is using the withholding of federal funding as leverage to control the university’s academic decision making.

Harvard University on Monday filed a lawsuit against various U.S. agencies and their heads, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Institutes of Health, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in his official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, asking the court to halt a funding freeze which the university says is unlawful and “beyond the government’s authority” (President and Fellows of Harvard College v. US Department of Health and Human Services, No. 1:25-cv-11048 (D. Mass. April 21, 2025)).

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the government’s freeze order, and “attendant unconstitutional conditions” in letters the government sent on April 3 and April 11 unlawful, asking it to restore Harvard’s funding by vacating the order. The government has no statutory authority to make an end run around the procedures mandated by Congress in the Title VI Civil Rights Act of 1964, the filing states.

In an open letter to the university community, Harvard University President Alan Garber notes the Trump administration has, in addition to an initial freeze of $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million in multiyear contracts, considered taking steps to freeze an another $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and has announced it is considering revoking Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Garber said.

According to the court filing, Harvard began receiving stop-work orders within hours of the freeze order. “The freezing of federal funds amounts to final agency action and has put vital medical, scientific, technological, and other research at risk,” it said.

“By halting the flow of federal funding, the freeze creates a ripple effect extending beyond Harvard’s campus by stifling job creation in the research sector across the nation,” the filing added. “The Government has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research” it has it has frozen.

Task Force’s statement. A group operating under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Education, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, announced the funding freeze earlier this month in response to what it said was “the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

But Garber noted “the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism” before taking punitive action. “Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach,” he said.

“As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism,” Garber said. “To address it effectively requires understanding, intention, and vigilance. Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law.”

The court filing stated Harvard has made policy and other changes over the last year “aimed at ensuring its campus is safe, fair, and welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students.” To that end, Harvard adopted new accountability procedures, imposed meaningful discipline for those who violate applicable policies, enhanced programs designed to address bias, and hired staff to support these programs.

“The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community,” Garber said.

Government’s demands. The university’s lawsuit follows an April 11 letter sent to Harvard by the administration that outlined 10 conditions that Harvard must satisfy to receive federal research funding previously committed to by the government and relied on by Harvard, its researchers, and its affiliates. The requirements seek to require Harvard to make what the letter called “merit-based hiring reform” as a basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.

Garber notes the letter also would require Harvard to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views -- demands that Harvard has refused to follow.

The government also sent a letter on April 3 that outlined broad areas of reform that it views as necessary for Harvard to remain a recipient of federal taxpayer dollars, including governance reforms that foster “clear lines of authority” and oversight for “biased programs that fuel antisemitism.”

By August, the government said, the university must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin “throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.”

Also, by August, “every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity,” the government said. In addition, the university must “immediately shutter” all DEI programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, “under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies.”

First Amendment cited. However, the First Amendment does not permit the government to “interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” Harvard argued, citing Moody v. NetChoice, 603 U.S. 707, 741 (2024). In addition, the government may not rely on the “‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion... to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech,’” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 189 (2024).

This is case No. 1:25-cv-11048.

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