What we would likely hear behind those closed doors

We don't know what kind legal advice the Regents are getting behind closed doors with regard to the current UCLA/UC conflict with the feds over frozen research grants. But it is likely along the lines of the item below:

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Supreme Court has created a major hurdle for colleges seeking to preserve research grants that have been canceled by the Trump administration, including Harvard University. In an emergency decision..., a 5-4 majority of the justices allowed the government to go forward with canceling some 900 National Institutes of Health grants worth nearly $800 million... The Supreme Court’s brief order stated that cases challenging the loss of those research dollars must be brought in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a special division of the judicial branch created to hear monetary claims against the government for things like breach of contract. In that venue, researchers or other entities might have to file complaints individually for every canceled grant...

A different 5-4 majority of the justices upheld the same district court’s authority to invalidate the government’s reasoning and guidance for canceling those grants. The Trump administration has justified the terminations by saying that research projects related to race, gender identity, and other diversity issues don’t align with the president’s priorities. In his June decision, Judge William G. Young ruled that the government had shown “pervasive racial discrimination in selecting grants for termination” and “an unmistakable pattern of discrimination against women’s health issues.”

The split decision from the Supreme Court has cast uncertainty over higher education’s efforts to defend itself from the administration’s leverage of using research grants to force changes in admissions, hiring, and student discipline, among other things... Harvard officials sued the Trump administration in April after the university rejected a lengthy set of demands to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, remove race as a factor in admissions and hiring, and cooperate with orders from the Department of Homeland Security. The administration then announced that it was canceling more than $2 billion in federal grants and contracts.

In July, Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts heard arguments in that case, with both Harvard and the government seeking a summary judgment that would avoid a trial... Even if Judge Burroughs rules in Harvard’s favor,* there is a good chance that the case will end up in front of the Supreme Court, where most of the justices have been pretty clear about how they think grant-termination issues should be handled, said Thomas Bluestein, associate vice president in the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community at George Mason University...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/will-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-research-grants-sink-harvards-lawsuit-against-trump.

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*As blog readers will know, she did rule for Harvard.