The Trump administration appealed a September ruling ordering the return of nearly $2.7 billion in frozen research funds to Harvard, according to a notice of appeal submitted late Thursday night.
The appeal, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, follows through on the Trump administration’s promise to challenge the Sept. 3 decision by District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, which granted Harvard sweeping summary judgement on constitutional grounds.
In a brief filing, lawyers for the Department of Justice said it would challenge final judgements in two cases — one brought by Harvard and another filed by the Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The appeal sends the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and formally begins the next phase of a legal battle that Burroughs previously decided largely in Harvard’s favor.
Final judgement in the case was entered on Oct. 20, giving the parties 60 days under federal law to file an appeal. The government’s filing on Thursday comes two days before that deadline.
The White House vowed to appeal Burroughs’ ruling shortly after it was issued.
“We will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision, and we are confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement to The Crimson at the time.
In her September ruling, Burroughs found that the Trump administration’s freeze on Harvard’s funding violated the Constitution, concluding that the cuts were retaliatory measures aimed at punishing Harvard for protected speech. She ruled that the administration had used allegations of antisemitism as a pretext for an “ideologically-motivated assault” on universities and failed to follow required procedures under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Burroughs’ ruling was a landmark victory for Harvard. The University brought the lawsuit in April after the White House cut billions of dollars in research funding, alleging the freeze was an attempt to punish Harvard for refusing to comply with federal demands — including requests to grant the federal government oversight over faculty hiring, admissions policies, and internal governance decisions.
Shortly after the ruling, Harvard began to see small amounts of funding being restored. In late September, researchers at the University saw $46 million in federal grants flow into their coffers — the first funds in four months — covering roughly 200 separate grants.
According to several legal experts, the government faces an uphill battle at the First Circuit, given Harvard’s decisive September win.
Former Department of Health and Human Services general counsel Samuel R. Bagenstos said in a September interview with The Crimson that he doubted the First Circuit would overturn the initial ruling.
“This is a really careful and well-reasoned opinion, and I don’t think the Court of Appeals will be persuaded that she got it wrong,” he said.
A ruling in Harvard’s favor would be consistent with recent First Circuit decisions finding that federal funding cuts can violate the Administrative Procedure Act.
In February, the Court denied a request to stay a Rhode Island district judge’s order preventing enforcement of an Office of Management and Budget directive that would have frozen congressionally approved grants and loans.
In that case, First Circuit judges wrote that the government failed to show it would be “irreparably injured” absent a stay and that pausing the lower court’s ruling would contravene the public interest.
If the federal government loses in its appeal to the First Circuit, its last hope is the Supreme Court, where the Trump administration may find more sympathy for its arguments. The Court’s conservative supermajority has frequently defended exertions of executive power by the Trump administration.
The filing, as expected, did not include the rationale for the appeal. Once it is docketed, lawyers for the University and the administration will have the opportunity to provide additional briefs supporting their cases.
Federal law does not impose a deadline for the First Circuit to act on the appeal, and because the government appealed from a final judgement, the court does not have discretion to decline review. The First Circuit is expected to set a briefing schedule in the coming weeks.
The federal government and Harvard are currently in talks over a potential settlement to their months-long conflict, which would entail a payment as large as $500 million in exchange for the restoration of funds and a resolution to ongoing investigations. No details of an agreement have been finalized.
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.