This post was updated Nov. 18 at 2:13 p.m.

A federal judge barred the Trump administration from freezing or threatening to freeze the UC’s federal funding Friday.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Association of University Professors, as well as 21 labor unions and faculty associations that represent 100,000 UC employees altogether. It alleges that the Trump administration’s suspension of $584 million in federal research funds to UCLA and proposed $1 billion settlement demand to regain said funding amounts to financial coercion and violates the free speech and due process rights of the University’s employees. 

Rita F. Lin, a judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, said she ordered the preliminary injunction to “stop the ongoing and imminent harms that Defendants are undisputedly causing.” 

“Plaintiffs show that the Administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin said in the order.

The federal government cannot refuse to “grant, non-renewing, withholding, freezing, suspending, terminating, conditioning, or otherwise restricting use of federal funds” to the UC, per the order. The Trump administration also cannot threaten to commit any of these actions, according to the order. 

Lin said in the order that the plaintiffs proved the federal government is coercing the University through its suspension of federal research grants. She alleged in the order that the federal government’s multiagency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism has a “playbook” that includes canceling federal grants and demanding large payouts for their restoration, both of which she ruled go beyond the scope of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX.

“Rooting out antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal,” she said in the order. “However, the unrebutted evidence shows that the Task Force Agencies and the Funding Agencies have gone well beyond that stated purpose.”

Lin added in the order that the task force’s leadership and other high-ranking members of federal agencies have said they would withhold federal funds to create ideological changes at universities. 

Lin is the same judge who issued two preliminary injunctions in a case brought by UC researchers which temporarily restored UCLA’s frozen National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health grants. 

The NSF has been instructed not to approve any new grants to UCLA, Lin said in her Friday decision.

“Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real,” she said in the decision. “With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting up Defendants’ pressure campaign.”

A UC Office of the President spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the University is committed to protecting its “mission, governance, and academic freedom.”

“The University of California is not a party to the suit but remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness,” the spokesperson said in the emailed statement.

Lin said in her decision that the federal government likely violated the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment through its allegedly coercive and retaliatory actions and by threatening to cancel universities’ federal funding if they do not agree to new programs unrelated to the original programs. 

She added that the Trump administration has “flouted the requirements” of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin at institutions that receive financial assistance from the federal government, as well as Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational settings receiving federal financial support.

The Trump administration’s conditions for the restoration of funding – including requirements to “socialize” international students based on campus norms which were listed in the settlement demand to the university – are violations of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights, Lin said.

“Plaintiffs present overwhelming evidence that these acts have already had a predictably chilling effect throughout the UC system, in keeping with their intended purpose,” she said in the decision.