Harvard asks court to reassign lawsuit

Harvard asked a federal judge on April 13 to move the Justice Department’s antisemitism lawsuit to Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who ruled for the university in a separate funding case last September. (harvard.edu) The Justice Department sued Harvard on March 20 in federal court in Boston, accusing the school of discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The department said it wants Harvard held liable for “race and national origin discrimination” and pointed to conduct after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. (justice.gov) Harvard’s lawyers say the new case belongs with Burroughs because it involves the same parties and the same basic fight over federal money, not the private antisemitism suits already before Judge Richard G. Stearns. In a March 28 filing, Harvard called the government’s case a “do-over” of its earlier loss over funding cuts. (thecrimson.com) That fight started in April 2025, when Harvard sued after the Trump administration froze billions of dollars in research support and tied restoration of the money to changes in governance, hiring, admissions, and discipline. On September 3, 2025, Burroughs ruled that the government had acted unlawfully and struck down the cancellation of $2.2 billion in research funding. (news.harvard.edu) Burroughs wrote that combating antisemitism was an “important and worthy objective,” but said the administration’s broader demands were aimed at Harvard’s speech, governance, and academic decisions. Harvard is now arguing that the Justice Department is using a new legal vehicle to pursue much of the same pressure. (news.harvard.edu; harvard.edu) The judge matters because Stearns has spent the past three years handling private Title VI cases accusing Harvard of tolerating antisemitism on campus. In those cases, he has let deliberate-indifference claims move forward and said Harvard’s response to a 2024 encampment could be seen as “indecisive” and “vacillating” at the motion-to-dismiss stage. (thecrimson.com) The government’s March complaint leans on many of the same events: protest encampments, reports of harassment, and Harvard’s own task force findings on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias. The department said Harvard failed to “meaningfully discipline” people who occupied buildings and intimidated Jewish and Israeli students. (justice.gov) Harvard says the complaint leaves out steps it has taken since 2024, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in disciplinary frameworks, revising protest rules, and expanding staff training for discrimination complaints. President Alan Garber told faculty last week that some of the government’s claims were “quite meritless,” according to attendees cited by The Harvard Crimson. (thecrimson.com) The transfer fight is a procedural dispute, but it will shape who decides whether this case is a fresh civil-rights action or a rerun of a funding battle the government already lost. For now, Harvard is asking the court to send the lawsuit to Burroughs before the merits move further. (nytimes.com; harvard.edu)