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A federal judge has dismissed the federal government’s lawsuit against Harvard University, finding President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice offered “no plausible allegation” of a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
The DOJ sued the venerated university in March, accusing it of discriminating against Israeli and Jewish students amid widespread campus protests in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
On Thursday, Judge Richard G. Stearns with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, a Clinton appointee, tossed out the complaint with a 4-page order.
Stearns wrote that the alleged incidents the Trump administration argued violated Title VI were “singly and collectively, to be too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.”
An alternative argument presented by the government, that it had provided the statutorily required notice of a violation and had “determined that compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means,” was also rejected by the court, with Stearns writing that the complaint was “is devoid of any factual allegations plausibly establishing that any events that might be construed as evidence of noncompliance” and the Trump administration’s “understanding of the determination requirement is inconsistent with the compliance-oriented focus of the statute.”
“In any event, the Government has a duty under the Administrative Procedure Act to act within the bounds of reasonableness, and the Government does not identify any rational basis for its determination,” the judge added. “That Harvard did not act within the exact confines of the Government’s commands is not a rational basis; the focus is on compliance with Title VI, not on compliance with specific governmental demands.”
The Trump administration “misconstrues, inadvertently or not, the purpose of an enforcement action” under these provisions of the Civil Rights Act, Stearns wrote. “Congress’s intent was not to penalize a wayward funding recipient but instead to incentivize it to bring itself into compliance with Title VI. Even in the Government’s fevered forewarning of potential havoc, it concedes that its own hypothetical result is a positive, if roughly achieved, outcome.”
Finding there had been “no plausible allegation of noncompliance following statutory notice,” the judge ordered the complaint to be dismissed.
The dispute stems from the protests that rocked Harvard and other college campuses in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. In April 2025, Trump issued a list of demands to Harvard, including calling for it to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, ban masks at protests, expel students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, and commit to “full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security.
Harvard President Alan M. Garber rejected the president’s orders as nothing more than a “political ploy disguised as an effort to address antisemitism on campus.”
In response, Trump threatened to withhold more than $2 billion in grants, cancel $60 million in federal contracts, called for the university to lose its tax-exempt status, and its ability to host foreign students.
The DOJ alleged Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any programs or activity that receives federal funding, by creating an allegedly “hostile educational environment” for Israeli and Jewish students.
The DOJ claimed Harvard had been “deliberately indifferent” to these students being targeted for “hostility, harassment, intimidation, and exclusion” during the campus protests.
The post Federal Judge Dismisses Trump DOJ’s Lawsuit Against Harvard: ‘No Plausible Allegation’ of Violations of Civil Rights Act first appeared on Mediaite.
