U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns of Massachusetts dismissed the Trump administration’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard.
The DOJ filed the lawsuit in March 2026.
The administration argued that Harvard should not receive federal funds for failing to protect Jewish students and allowing antisemitism on its campus.
Harvard asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit because the administration did not prove that the university has continued to violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, that the lawsuit is unlawful retaliation, and that no breach of contract occurred.
Stearns only addressed the first argument.
Stearns said the complaint focuses almost entirely on incidents during the 2023-2024 school year and only three from March 2025.
“Without diminishing any concern arising from these occurrences, the court finds them, 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,” wrote Stearns.
The administration notified Harvard of alleged failure to comply with Title VI on June 30, 2025.
“As noted above, the Amended Complaint is devoid of any factual allegations plausibly establishing that any events that might be construed as evidence of noncompliance occurred after June 30, 2025,” said Stearns.
The judge also shot down the argument that dismissing the lawsuit would make it “virtually impossible for the United States to win a Title VI suit because a reasonable defendant would cease its indifference as soon as the United States threatens to withhold funding,” saying the administration “misconstrues” why we have enforcement action.
“Congress’s intent was not to penalize a wayward funding recipient but instead to incentivize it to bring itself into compliance with Title VI,” stressed Stearns. “Even in the Government’s fevered forewarning of potential havoc, it concedes that its own hypothetical result is a positive, if roughly achieved, outcome.”
However, Stearns’s decision is narrow.
“If comfort is needed, the court’s ruling does not have as broad an impact as the Government asserts,” concluded Stearns. “This decision is limited to the specific circumstances presented here, where there is no plausible allegation of noncompliance following statutory notice.”
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