Harvard files motion in lawsuit

Harvard asked a federal court this week to move the Trump administration’s antisemitism lawsuit to the judge who already ruled for the university in a closely related funding fight. (harvard.edu) In a filing dated Monday, April 13, Harvard said the Justice Department’s March 20 complaint is a “do-over” of the government’s 2025 case over campus antisemitism and federal grants. Harvard asked that the case be transferred from United States District Judge Richard Stearns to United States District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston. (insidehighered.com) The Justice Department sued Harvard on March 20, 2026, accusing the university of race and national origin discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The department said Harvard “failed to protect” those students after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and sought to recover federal money and freeze more grants. (justice.gov) Harvard’s argument turns on case assignment, not the full merits of the complaint. Its lawyers said the new suit involves the same parties, the same core allegations about antisemitism, and the same push to cut off federal funding that Burroughs already addressed in Harvard’s 2025 case. (thecrimson.com) That earlier case began on April 21, 2025, when Harvard sued the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies over the suspension and termination of federal research funding. Court records show Burroughs issued an order on September 3, 2025, and final judgment entered on October 20, 2025. (clearinghouse.net) Harvard says that timeline matters because the administration’s new complaint again ties antisemitism allegations to an effort to strip the university of federal support. In its transfer motion, Harvard said the government left the 2025 case out of its related-case notice even though that case “addresses the issues at the heart of this latest case.” (harvard.edu) Burroughs’ 2025 ruling also gives Harvard language it now wants the court to revisit. Harvard’s March filing said Burroughs had already rejected the government’s earlier theory that the university’s response to antisemitism justified terminating hundreds of grants. (thecrimson.com) The administration has framed the new case differently. The Justice Department says Harvard violated federal civil rights law by being deliberately indifferent to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students and by selectively enforcing campus rules, and officials said the university’s proposed reforms did not satisfy Title VI requirements. (justice.gov) Harvard has pointed to steps it says it already took, including a presidential task force on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, revised protest and campus-use rules, use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in discipline, and expanded training for staff who handle discrimination complaints. (thecrimson.com) The immediate question is narrower than the larger campus fight: which judge hears the case, and whether the court treats it as a fresh lawsuit or a continuation of a battle Harvard says it already won last fall. (insidehighered.com)