Organizations representing K-12 and higher education teachers asked a federal judge to restore $400 million in grants the Trump administration rescinded from Columbia University following an investigation into campus anti-Semitism.
The lawsuit, filed March 25 in New York City U.S. district court by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Association of University Professors, accuses the Department of Education and the Department of Justice of violating the First Amendment by “using funding cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.”
“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said Orion Danjuma, lead counsel for the case, in a news release issued by the Protect Democracy organization. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education from unlawful government censorship and political repression.”…