Trump administration seeks $1 billion settlement from UCLA, a White House official says

The White House official did not detail any additional demands the administration has made to UCLA or elaborate on the settlement amount. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration had suspended $584 million in federal grants for UCLA, the university said this week. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division issued a finding that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

The university had drawn widespread criticism for how it handled dispersing an encampment of Israel-Hamas war protesters in 2024. One night, counterprotesters attacked the encampment, throwing traffic cones and firing pepper spray, with fighting that continued for hours, injuring more than a dozen people, before police stepped in. The next day, after hundreds defied orders to leave, more than 200 people were arrested. Later, Jewish students said demonstrators in encampments blocked them from getting to class.

An attack on California?

The University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said Friday the university had “just received” a document from the Department of Justice and would review it. He said the size of the proposed settlement would “devastate” the University of California, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.

“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission,” said Milliken, who started as president last week. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday accused Trump of trying to silence academic freedom in his attack on such a prestigious public university system.

“He has threatened us through extortion with a billion-dollar fine unless we do his bidding,” Newsom told reporters. Apparently referencing the settlements with Columbia and Brown, he added: “We will not be like some of those other institutions that have followed a different path.”

The $1 billion demand in the UCLA settlement is linked to Newsom’s status as one of Trump’s most outspoken foes, said Peter McDonough, vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.

“Anyone who thinks this appalling demand is not blatantly political and ideological has their head in the sand,“ McDonough said. “Of course it’s influenced by the fact that UCLA sits within the California system and the California system sits within the state of California.”

Settlements with Trump, and in court

The Trump administration has used its control of federal funding to push for reforms at elite colleges that the president decries as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism. The administration also has launched investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.

Last month, Columbia University agreed to pay $200 million as part of a settlement to resolve investigations into the government’s allegations that the school violated federal antidiscrimination laws. The agreement also restored more than $400 million in research grants.

The Trump administration is using its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation. For instance, the administration is pressing for a deal that would require Harvard to pay far more than Columbia's $200 million. Harvard leaders have been negotiating with the White House even as they battle in court to regain access to billions in federal research funding terminated by the Trump administration.

UCLA has already reached one settlement about the 2024 protests. The university agreed last week to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit from three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who argued the university violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block their access to classes and other areas on campus in 2024.

UCLA initially had argued that it had no legal responsibility over the issue because protesters, not the university, blocked Jewish students’ access to areas. The university also worked with law enforcement to thwart attempts to set up new protest camps.

But in a preliminary injunction a year earlier, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi disagreed and ordered UCLA to create a plan to protect Jewish students on campus. The University of California has since created systemwide campus guidelines on protests, with an Office of Campus and Community Safety at UCLA.

As part of the settlement, UCLA said it will contribute $2.3 million to eight organizations that combat antisemitism and support the university’s Jewish community. UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose Jewish father and grandparents fled Nazi Germany to Mexico and whose wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, also launched an initiative to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.

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AP writer Julie Watson contributed to this report.