Judge orders Trump admin to restore partial funding to UCLA
The order partially reverses a freeze that locked up $584 million in federal research funding.
The administration of President Donald Trump has been put on a deadline to submit verification to the court proving grants have been restored.
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate hundreds of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grants at UCLA, partially reversing a freeze that sidelined more than $584 million in federal funding last month.
The administration has until Aug. 19 to inform the court whether the grants have been restored.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the Tuesday ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco researchers, who argued the freezes violated a June court order protecting University of California science grants.
The June ruling blocks the cancellation of those grants.
The suspended NSF projects include research on cancer, neurobiology, and clean energy. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy remain blocked.
The Trump administration froze the grants after accusing UCLA of discriminatory admissions practices and failing to address antisemitism on campus. Federal attorneys argued that the funding pauses were temporary suspensions, not terminations, but the judge ruled that the indefinite freezes amounted to terminations under her previous injunction.
The administration is demanding more than $1 billion in concessions from the UC system, including changes to protest policies, gender identity rules, and admissions data-sharing agreements, in exchange for restoring all frozen funds.
UC officials have rejected the terms, while California state leaders have blasted the demands as political overreach.
With the NSF grants now ordered restored, many UCLA researchers can return to work, but the future of the remaining suspended funding remains uncertain.