Students walk past Royce Hall at the UCLA campus in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.
Damian Dovarganes/AP
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Damian Dovarganes/AP
LOS ANGELES – A federal court has mandated the Trump administration to reinstate $500 million in federal grant funds that were previously withheld from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction, highlighting that the government likely breached the Administrative Procedure Act. This law requires detailed procedures and justifications when federal funding is reduced. Instead, UCLA received vague form letters notifying them of the suspension of multiple grants from various agencies, without any specific explanations.
Earlier in August, UCLA revealed that the Trump administration had frozen $584 million in federal grants, citing allegations of civil rights violations connected to antisemitism and affirmative action policies.
Following this, Judge Lin ruled later that month to restore $81 million in grants from the National Science Foundation to UCLA. She determined that the prior cuts violated a June preliminary injunction, which had ordered the NSF to reinstate numerous grants it had terminated across the University of California system, which encompasses ten campuses statewide.
The White House has yet to issue a response to requests for comment regarding Monday’s court decision.
The Trump administration has leveraged federal funding as a tool to demand changes at prestigious universities, criticizing them for what it describes as pervasive liberal bias and antisemitism. Additionally, the administration has initiated probes into diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, alleging these programs unfairly disadvantage white and Asian American students.
Similar funding disputes have occurred with Ivy League schools such as Columbia and Brown, which reached agreements to secure their grants after the Trump administration challenged their responses to campus antisemitism.
In a related case, Harvard University contested funding cuts through litigation. In early September, a federal judge ruled that the freeze on Harvard’s funding constituted unlawful retaliation against the university for resisting the administration’s demands.
The Trump administration had proposed resolving its investigation into UCLA by demanding a $1 billion payment from the university, a move that California Governor Gavin Newsom condemned as an act of extortion.
UCLA has stated that such a substantial financial demand would severely harm the institution’s operations.
The recent court order specifically addresses hundreds of medical research grants from the National Institutes of Health. These grants support critical studies on Parkinson’s disease therapies, cancer recovery processes, nerve cell regeneration, and other vital health research areas that UCLA leaders emphasize as essential for advancing public health.
