Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction in AAUP vs. Trump Case
On November 14, 2025, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California granted the plaintiffs in AAUP v. Trump, including UCLA-FA, a preliminary injunction! By temporary court order, the federal government is now prohibited from holding federal funds hostage in an effort to coerce the University of California into imposing policies that would violate our first amendment rights.
This order means that the Trump administration is now explicitly prohibited from doing the following:
- Requiring the UC to make hiring, firing, or funding decisions on the basis of Plaintiffs’ members’ protected speech or freedom of assembly.
- Requiring the UC to restrict its curriculum, scholarship, or research based on the Defendants’ preferred viewpoints.
- Requiring the UC to screen international students based on “anti-Western” or “anti-American” views and/or “socialize” international students to favored “norms.”
- Requiring the UC to institute reporting requirements concerning Plaintiffs’ protected speech or freedom of assembly.
- Requiring the UC to adopt specific definitions of “sex,” “male,” and “female,” or adopt Defendants’ favored views as to gender or gender affirming care and disallowing inconsistent speech by its faculty, staff, or students.
- Restricting how the UC decides scholarship awards, hiring, or admissions, beyond what current constitutional or statutory law requires.
In last week’s preliminary injunction hearing, lawyers from Alshuler, Berzon—Connie Chan and Stacey Leyton—were able to argue convincingly, based on a mountain of evidence assembled by the team of lawyers at Leonard Carder, that our teaching and research has been upended by these brazenly illegal efforts to subdue the University of California. We are grateful for the 74 declarations made by faculty and staff at UC that convincingly made this case. Judge Lin found this evidence to demonstrate “classic, predictable first amendment harms.”
UCLA-FA and CUCFA leadership are proud to represent the teachers, researchers, and workers of the University of California, and to have been able to successfully challenge rising authoritarianism in federal court.
