Trump Admin Wants UCLA to Pay One Billion Settlement for Civil Rights Violations

Trump Admin Wants UCLA to Pay One Billion Settlement for Civil Rights Violations

This situation is going to involve a lawsuit before it’s over.

Politico reports:

Trump administration demands $1B from University of California-Los Angeles

The Trump administration is pushing the University of California-Los Angeles to pay $1 billion as part of a sweeping settlement agreement that would resolve alleged civil rights violations and force the school to adopt major changes to how it operates, while restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen federal research grants.

The proposed deal is certain to be subject to intense negotiations between the University of California and the White House and deliver a new political challenge to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The administration’s opening demand also marks a major effort to expand the scope of a months-long political and policy offensive against higher education institutions — this time against a flagship campus at one of the country’s largest public university systems.

The huge settlement demand comes as UCLA is at risk of losing more than half a billion dollars in research funds that the Trump administration has withheld as leverage in its pressure campaign to force the school to address allegations of antisemitism on campus. After targeting other elite universities with similar claims, the administration turned its focus on UCLA, alleging it failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination by pro-Palestinian protesters during tumultuous, sometimes violent demonstrations against Israel’s war against Hamas that consumed the campus last year.

Justice officials have said they are prepared to file a lawsuit against the school if it refuses to negotiate.

Under the terms of the administration’s proposal, UCLA would pay the billion dollars in equal installments over three years and put another $172 million into a fund to pay legal claims made against it, according to a person familiar with the matter and a draft of the proposal viewed by POLITICO.

“As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and 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 James Milliken, who recently took over as president of the University of California system, in a statement that acknowledged the university had received the $1 billion settlement proposal from the Justice Department on Friday.

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