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A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore a portion of the 800 federal science research grants that it suspended at UCLA last month, delivering a major setback to efforts to force the university into a $1 billion settlement.

California district court judge Rita F. Lin ruled Tuesday that the suspensions violated her June  preliminary injunction in which she ordered the National Science Foundation to restore 114 grants it had terminated at the University of California and blocked the agency from cancelling other grants at the UC system.

”NSF’s actions violate the Preliminary Injunction,” Lin wrote.

Her June order came after lawyers for University of California researchers argued the science foundation grant terminations were arbitrary and capricious and in violation of federal law. Those grants and others were terminated over alleged Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion violations following several Trump executive orders in January.

Lin’s order to restore the suspended grants came in response to a court filing lawyers for the UC researchers submitted after 300 National Science Foundation Grants and 500 National Institutes of Health grants at UCLA were suspended. The suspensions froze $584 million. The lawyers aren’t acting on behalf of the UC system, though some are employed at the UC. It is not yet clear if all 300 suspended National Science Foundation grants are to be restored under Lin’s latest order. A lawyer for the researchers, Claudia Polsky, said all 300 should be restored.

Lin told the Trump administration and lawyers for the UC researchers to file an update on the restorations Aug. 19.

Lin’s latest order doesn’t restore UCLA’s suspended National Institutes of Health grants because they weren’t covered in her initial June order.

Research Powers US to Global Leadership in Science

Campuses rely on the funding to make scientific breakthroughs, develop new medicines, train graduate students and fuel the research that has made the U.S. arguably the world’s leader in scientific discovery.

Lawyers for the federal government contended that suspending the UCLA grants didn’t violate Lin’s June order, which barred terminations but was silent on suspensions. Lawyers for the University of California researchers said there’s no difference between suspensions and terminations because both mean researchers lose access to funding. They also argued that like in the June case, the suspensions of UCLA grants didn’t follow federal procedure that requires an agency to explain why each individual grant should no longer continue to receive funding.

“NSF’s indefinite suspensions differ from a termination in name only. ” Lin wrote in Tuesday’s order.  She added that the letters informing UCLA of the grant suspensions “fail to provide a ‘grant-specific explanation’ for why the award has been terminated, as required by the Preliminary Injunction.”

Some federal judges have faulted the Trump administration for never defining what it considers DEI but cancelling funding to schools based on those violations anyway.

“Although a new presidential administration is entitled to develop programs with its chosen priorities, the Executive may not set out to suppress ideas it deems dangerous by trying to drive them out of the marketplace of ideas,” Lin wrote in her June preliminary injunction.

How We Got Here

The Trump administration suspended UCLA’s grants over allegations that the campus isn’t doing enough to combat antisemitism. The National Science Foundation sent a letter to UCLA on Aug. 1 that accused the campus of admitting students based on race, even though all public campuses in California have been barred from affirmative action since state voters eliminated the practice in 1996.

The letter also accused the campus of relying on admissions essays to determine an applicant’s race. But when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down affirmative action in 2023, the majority ruling allowed campuses to allow students to write about their race and identity in admissions essays.

The science foundation made similar accusations against Harvard University when it terminated that campus’s grants.

The 800 grant suspensions followed a federal Department of Justice report last month that accused  the campus of not doing enough to address antisemitism, particularly related to events during last year’s pro-Palestine protests, which included overnight encampments erected by protesters. The report came months after UCLA commissioned a task force to investigate antisemitism on campus and come up with recommendations that UCLA leaders said they’d implement.

That report published the same day UCLA agreed to a $6.45 million settlement with four Jewish plaintiffs. That deal was opposed by several pro-Palestinian professors and students, some of whom are Jewish.

Last year a federal judge in the case sided with the Jewish plaintiffs who said that the anti-Israel sentiment displayed by protestors in the encampment violated their religious liberties because of their spiritual ties to Israel. “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” the judge, Mark C. Scarsi, wrote in his preliminary injunction.

Various Jewish groups debate whether anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic. The UCLA encampment included Jewish participants.

About a week later, on Aug 8, the Trump administration sent UCLA a settlement proposal of $1 billion that the school would pay over several installments in exchange for getting back the suspended science grants, CNN first reported. The settlement also sought to ban overnight demonstrations at UCLA, but that was already campus policy before last spring’s pro-Palestine protests; the UC reaffirmed those bans systemwide last fall.

How California Responded

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump “has threatened us through extortion with a billion dollar fine unless we do his bidding” at a press conference on Friday hours after CNN first reported Trump’s settlement demand. Newsom said “we’ll sue” last Friday when a reporter asked how California will respond. The state’s attorney general has already filed 37 lawsuits against the Trump administration, including several tied to education funding.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “bring it on, Gavin” at a press conference Tuesday.

“A payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians,” said UC President James B. Milliken in a statement about the $1 billion settlement demand. UCLA has also continued its media blitz highlighting the human benefits of the university’s health and science research.

The settlement demand “does not make Jewish students safer,” the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California said in a statement Tuesday. The advocacy group 39 organizations that offer family services, political advocacy, immigration legal aid and other nonprofit work.

The Jewish affairs committee pointed to several strides UC and UCLA made to curtail antisemitism and promote safer campuses. “Meaningful progress is already underway in California,” the group wrote.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.