U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin issued a preliminary injunction on Friday prohibiting the Trump Administration and its agencies from cutting or blocking current or future funding or grants to the University of California system or its faculty and staff “with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.”

“Plaintiffs have submitted overwhelming evidence” in support of their claims that Trump’s actions have violated rights guaranteed by the First and Tenth Amendments, and failed to follow legally required administrative procedures in the process, Judge Lin wrote in her order.

“Defendants do not deny any of this,” she found.

“The undisputed record demonstrates that Defendants have engaged in coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment,” Judge Lin wrote. “It also shows that they have flouted the requirements of Title VI and IX and cancelled funding in an arbitrary and capricious manner while ignoring required procedural safeguards.”

Here, I’m including the full text of the introductory section of her order granting a motion for a preliminary injunction.

INTRODUCTION
Plaintiffs have submitted overwhelming evidence. Across 74 declarations and more than 700 pages of supporting documents, 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. Agency officials, as well as the President and Vice President, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune. Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the Administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this.

It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California. Defendant Leo Terrell, who heads the Administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, publicly stated in a news interview that the UC had been “hijacked by the left” and vowed to begin investigations. The Department of Justice and Department of Education have
opened a series of civil rights investigations into the UC. On July 29, 2025, in one of those investigations, DOJ issued a Notice of Findings to UCLA concerning its handling of antisemitism during 2024 student protests. Defendants did not engage in the required notice and hearing processes under Title VI for cutting off funds for alleged discrimination, nor did they
mention the remedial steps UCLA had already taken to address the issues described. Instead, within 72 hours, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy abruptly froze $584 million in research funding to UCLA, citing alleged civil rights violations. And at least one of those agencies, NSF, has acknowledged that it is under instructions not to approve any new grants to UCLA. About a week later, on August 8, 2025, DOJ proposed a settlement to restore funding, which would require UCLA to review its DEI programs, change its handling of student protests, and adopt the Administration’s views on gender, among other things. The UC has not stated whether it will agree. However, UC President James Milliken called the situation “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.” The UC receives more than $17 billion per year in federal funding. Defendant Terrell has vowed to take “every single federal dollar” from the UC and similar universities, if they do not accede.

Defendants do not deny any of this. Instead, their principal argument is that the UC might not agree to the proposed conditions for restoring funding, so Plaintiffs’ present case is too speculative to be heard. But Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting up Defendants’ pressure campaign. And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how Defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system. They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too “left” or “woke,” in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by Defendants. They also give examples of projects the UC has stopped due to fear of the same reprisals. These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.

The undisputed record demonstrates that Defendants have engaged in coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment. It also shows that they have flouted the requirements of Title VI and IX and cancelled funding in an arbitrary and capricious manner while ignoring required procedural safeguards. None of the jurisdictional hurdles raised by Defendants prevent the issuance of preliminary injunctive relief to stop the ongoing and imminent harms that Defendants are undisputedly causing. Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is GRANTED, for these reasons and those further explained below.

At the conclusion of her order, after spellling out the evidence of constitutional violations, Judge Lin point to specific examples of actions by the administration that would violate the First Amendment rights of plaintiffs in the case.

To be clear, examples of conditions on the grant or continuance of federal funding that would violate the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs’ members would include, but are not limited to:

• Requiring the UC to make hiring, firing, or funding decisions on the basis of Plaintiffs’ members’ protected speech or freedom of assembly.

• Requiring the UC to restrict its curriculum, scholarship, or research based on the Defendants’ preferred viewpoints.

• Requiring the UC to screen international students based on “anti-Western” or “anti-American” views and/or “socialize” international students to favored “norms.”

• Requiring the UC to institute reporting requirements concerning Plaintiffs’ protected speech or freedom of assembly.

• Requiring the UC to adopt specific definitions of “sex,” “male,” and “female,” or adopt Defendants’ favored views as to gender or gender affirming care and disallowing inconsistent speech by its faculty, staff, or students.

• Restricting how the UC decides scholarship awards, hiring, or admissions, beyond what current constitutional or statutory law requires.

The full text of Judge Lin’s order follows.