Judge spikes DOJ suit demanding Harvard's admissions records

A federal judge in Boston threw out the Trump administration's lawsuit against Harvard University on Monday, ending — for now — the Justice Department's push to pry loose applicant records in a probe of whether the school still weighs race in admissions.

Judge Myong Joun ruled the DOJ jumped the gun. In his written decision, he said the government sued without first taking the legally required steps to get Harvard to hand over the data voluntarily. He pointed out the complaint never alleged that the DOJ told Harvard it would sue if the school refused, nor did it spell out the specific failure it had identified.

Joun, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, made clear his decision was narrow and procedural. He did not decide whether Harvard discriminated or whether the agencies might eventually be entitled to the applicant-level data on thousands of high schoolers. The Justice Department could refile if it does more administrative legwork first, he noted.

The case landed in Joun's courtroom in February, with the DOJ arguing Harvard wasn't cooperating with investigations into whether it follows the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling that struck down race-conscious admissions. The administration said it needed years of applicant data to check compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial discrimination in education programs.

Harvard's lawyers fired back that the suit was payback for the school refusing demands to overhaul its governance, hiring and academics. They said it came after Trump announced in early February that he was ending settlement talks and wanted $1 billion in damages from a university he said had 'been, for a long time, behaving very badly.'

It's the latest loss for the administration in its sprawling fight with the Ivy League school. Other judges have already blocked efforts to kill more than $2 billion in grants, to bar Harvard from hosting international students, and to sue it over allegations it failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. Meanwhile, Harvard data released last week showed Black undergraduate enrollment slipping for a third straight year — down to 9.3% in the class of 2030 from 11.5% a year earlier.