Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Lawsuit Over Harvard Admissions Records

A federal judge in Boston dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit on Monday, November 2, that tried to force Harvard University to hand over years of admissions records. US District Judge Myong Joun rejected the case, which grew out of a federal investigation into whether Harvard still considers race when it decides who gets in.

The records fight is one piece of a wider clash between the Trump administration and the Ivy League school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard has already won rulings from other judges that blocked the administration from ending more than 2 billion dollars in federal grants, stopped it from barring the school from hosting international students, and rejected a suit that accused Harvard of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.

What the government asked for

The Justice Department filed the case in February. It argued that Harvard was not cooperating with investigations into whether the university follows the Supreme Court ruling from 2023 that rejected race-conscious admissions programs used to raise enrollment of minority students.

Justice Department and Education Department officials said they need years of applicant-level data to tell whether race still plays a role in admissions decisions. The demand rested on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that bars racial discrimination in education programs.

What Harvard said

Harvard said the Justice Department sued without first taking the steps the law requires to secure voluntary compliance. The records at issue, the university said, include sensitive data on thousands of high school students who applied for admission.

University lawyers also argued that the case was retaliation. They said the suit followed a decision by President Donald Trump in early February to end settlement talks. Trump said at the time that he wanted 1 billion dollars in damages from Harvard, which he said had "been, for a long time, behaving very badly." Harvard contends the lawsuit was part of a broader campaign against the school. The administration has said it uses federal funding and government power to force changes at universities that Trump says are dominated by "radical left" ideologies.

Why it matters

Admissions at Harvard sit at the center of the national fight over race and college access that produced the 2023 Supreme Court ruling. A demand for records from the whole applicant pool would have tested how far the government can reach into a university's files to police that ruling. Monday's dismissal closes this records case in the Boston federal court. The other fights between Harvard and the administration, over grants, international students and campus harassment claims, continue in separate cases.