AAUP Files Suit in University of California Case

The AAUP and a broad coalition of faculty, staff, students, and labor unions today filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration's attempt to unlawfully stifle free speech within the University of California (UC) system, the second largest employer in California. The massive coalition of labor unions representing workers throughout the nation, as well as those with members directly affected by the administration's unlawful attack on free speech, is represented in the matter by Democracy Forward and Altshuler Berzon LLP.

The case is American Association of University Professors et al v. Trump et al and the coalition is asking the court to block the Trump administration from further use of financial threats to coerce the UC system to accede to demands that will harm faculty, staff, and students, in violation of the Constitution and existing law. The Trump administration has attempted to implement a playbook to threaten colleges and universities based on a disdain for and disagreement with the content of those institutions' curriculum, the nature and content of the expressive activity that has taken place at those institutions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives.

This effort expanded to the UC system at the end of July 2025, when the administration used reports of antisemitism in protests on a UC campus, and vague and unsupported allegations that UC was discriminating by using "proxies" for race in college admissions and transgender-inclusive policies, as justification to cancel almost $600 million in research grants to a UC campus. That was followed by a demand letter insisting that the UC system cede control to the federal government and to a government-appointed monitor over certain curriculum, faculty hiring and promotion decisions, adopt new protest restrictions and other restrictions on speech, agree to the disclosure of certain student disciplinary records, eliminate "diversity, equity, and inclusion" efforts, end gender-inclusive policies as relates to restrooms and other private spaces, and ban its medical centers from providing gender-affirming care to minors, among other policy changes that, if adopted, would violate the constitutional and state law rights of faculty, students, and staff. On top of these policy demands, the administration is demanding that the UC pay at least $1 billion to the federal government, despite no legal basis for imposing any such fine.

"We will not stand by as the Trump administration destroys one of the largest public university higher education systems in the country and bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement," said AAUP President Todd Wolfson. "In this historic lawsuit, faculty, students, and staff walk together to fight the authoritarian takeover of our universities. We stand hand in hand to protect not only our individual rights to free expression, debate, and association, but also to safeguard the health, safety, and economic mobility of our communities - all of which is at risk."