The NY Times: In the three months since President Trump returned to power, his administration has prized speed and shock value. Harvard University is wagering that White House strategy could be used against it. The 51-page lawsuit the university filed on Monday, intended to fight the administration’s freeze of billions in federal funding, hinges largely on a statute that provides specific timelines for federal agencies to draft rules and impose penalties. This wonky workhorse of American law, known as the Administrative Procedure Act, has been cited in a majority of lawsuits filed this year against the Trump administration, including complaints seeking to reverse funding reductions to the United States Agency for International Development, local schools and Voice of America.
While Mr. Trump’s strategy has generated headlines, the outcomes of these cases will determine whether that approach will also produce lasting policy victories. In Harvard’s case, the university is seeking to fend off accusations of discrimination from the administration’s antisemitism task force, a group that was put together to move faster than typical federal civil rights investigators.
...Harvard turned to the administrative procedure law after facing a crush of government demands that included, among other conditions, audits of its faculty for plagiarism and political views, along with changes to admissions and hiring. The university argues that Washington is seeking to exert unconstitutional sway — and that its effort is defined by sloppiness that blasted past due process...
“Defendants,” Harvard wrote in the lawsuit, “failed to comply with their own regulations before freezing Harvard’s federal financial assistance.” In another section, Harvard notes that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids certain kinds of discrimination, requires a detailed process before it can be a basis for freezing money. The Trump administration, Harvard says, did “the precise opposite.” ...
...Even part of Harvard’s First Amendment argument partially relies on the procedure act, which says that an action by a federal agency that runs “contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity” is illegal. “In terms of what Harvard is specifically doing, it is pushing back against agency action, and we have an entire legal framework,” said Osamudia R. James, a professor at the University of North Carolina whose specialties include administrative law.
...[But] The outcome of the legal case may be beside the point, Professor James said. “If you lose ultimately at the court but millions of people now believe that all of these institutions are hotbeds of discrimination, that they don’t provide any benefits to the communities in which they operate, that they don’t produce anything of value,” she said, adding, “that might be a win if you are hostile to higher education institutions.”
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