SAN FRANCISCO—Students and faculty on University of California campuses say it’s not the same anymore. Security officers are everywhere, stopping people to question them about where they are headed and what’s in their bags. President Donald Trump’s attacks on free speech and academic freedom, they say, are evident everywhere.
It’s all part of the Republican Trump regime’s punishment of the 32-campus University of California system, its 21 unions, and its 100,000 faculty and student workers for their political views, and that’s unconstitutional, a new lawsuit they have filed says.
Trump’s assault is taking the form of yanking grant money because—the president alleges—the UC system still promotes “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” allows Palestine solidarity protests on campuses, and takes racial composition into account for admissions.
So, the unions, and their faculty and student workers, marched into U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Sept. 16 and demanded their grants back, along with a ban on further financial threats and a court order against billions of dollars in fines Trump threatens to levy against the college system.
Six days later, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin granted a preliminary injunction against Trump’s freeze on $500 million in federal grants to UCLA in particular. The judge said the Trump regime broke federal law by suspending the grants via “generalized form letters” without giving specific reasons for each. But Judge Lin’s ruling doesn’t change the basic thrust of the big lawsuit, which is based on Trump’s constitutional violations.
The American Association of University Professors, now an AFT sector, the Teachers (AFT) itself, AFT’s California university faculty council, and the pro bono law firm Democracy Forward are leading the charge. Defending academic freedom to teach has been AAUP’s top cause for more than 100 years.
“We will not stand by” as Trump “bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement,” said AAUP President Todd Wolfson in a statement, harkening back to the birth of that movement—against the Vietnam War—at UC Berkeley in 1964.
Notably absent from the lawsuit, so far, are university presidents and other management. A statement about the lawsuit admits they prefer “negotiating” with the Trump government.
The suit says Trump is “determined to exert ideological control over the nation’s core institutions, following a playbook employed by autocratic movements around the world….” Examples abound. President Reycip Erdogan runs Turkey like a dictator and is scheming to jail his leading foe. Hungarian President Viktor Orban has taken over universities and the mass media in his country.
Former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who often compared himself to Trump, was just sentenced to prison for instigating a Trump-like coup attempt to prevent his successor—and election winner—Lula da Silva, from taking office.
Overall, the Trump regime violated constitutional free speech and due process rights and the Tenth Amendment’s mandate that constitutional powers “not reserved” specifically to the U.S. or to states “are reserved to the states, or to the people,” the suit explains.
Walking together
“In this historic lawsuit, faculty, students, and staff walk together to fight the authoritarian takeover of our universities,” AAUP’s Wolfson added. “We stand hand in hand to protect not only our individual rights to free expression, debate, and association, but also to safeguard the health, safety, and economic mobility of our communities—all of which is at risk.”
“We should tackle antisemitism and other acts of hate and discrimination,” said Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher on leave. But Weingarten predicts Trump’s actions will increase antisemitism and “make things worse for Jewish students by making things worse for everyone. Today, we reject this attempt to silence free speech.”
“These illegal demands on the University of California are intended to punish an esteemed institution by crippling economic opportunity and hindering the open pursuit of knowledge—the core purpose of our colleges and universities.”
Trump “attempts to resegregate our universities, to banish non-citizens and gender non-conforming people from public life, to suppress free speech, to silence pro-Palestinian activism, and to supersede shared governance on our campuses—potentially undermining our collective bargaining rights,” said University of California-AFT President Katie Rodger.
“This isn’t about antisemitism, it’s about banning gender-affirming care at UC hospitals, firing tenured faculty, exerting federal control over the content of UC teaching and research, and permanent loss of jobs for many contingent faculty and staff,” said Annie McClanahan, president of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations.
As in other top lawsuits against Trump, Democracy Forward, the pro bono organization of lawyers established at the start of Trump’s first term, is constructing the case papers and helping lead the legal charge.
“In America, there is no king. Under our Constitution, the president cannot force people to think like he does, believe like he does, nor be exposed to only the ideas he agrees with,” said Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman.
“Yet, he’s trying to do just that. The Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to stop students, faculty, and staff at UC campuses from exercising their First Amendment rights and to unlawfully seek to intimidate educational institutions is a callous dismissal of one of the most important pillars of our democracy.”
The California suit is the latest among more than 200 legal challenges from unions, a few law firms, the AFL-CIO, and civil liberties groups against Trump dictatorial-like edicts and commands.
Trump foes have mostly won in U.S. trial courts, such as the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, where this suit was filed on Sept. 16. There’s been a mixed response from federal appeals court judges—and flat turndowns, on party lines from the GOP-named majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But this suit is unique in that involves an entire college system—though not the UC system’s bosses, yet—an enormous sum, and that it openly exposes Trump’s use of withholding federal cash as a form of extortion.
Besides AAUP, AFT, and AFT’s California council of university faculties, other unions on the suit are ten of those individual faculty groups—including those at UCLA and UC Berkeley—AFSCME Local 3299, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (NNA), Teamsters Local 2010, the Auto Workers and their Local 4811, and a Communications Workers California sector.
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