A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit accusing Harvard University of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students. The ruling ends one of the sharpest legal fights between the White House and the school. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns issued the four-page order in Massachusetts, granting Harvard’s motion to dismiss.
Stearns found that the discrimination incidents cited by the government were too isolated and episodic to support a claim of ongoing federal civil rights violations. Most of the allegations centered on protests over Israel’s war in Gaza during the 2023-2024 school year. The government added only a handful of further incidents from March 2025.
The lawsuit, filed in March, argued Harvard had let a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students persist on campus. Harvard countered that the claims stretched isolated incidents into an unsupported pattern. Stearns largely agreed, writing that the record did not show the kind of ongoing violation the law requires.
The ruling marks a setback for one part of a much larger campaign. The Trump administration has waged that campaign against Harvard since the president returned to office. Separately, the administration has moved to cancel billions of dollars in federal research funding to the university, a fight that continues in other courts. The dismissal fits a broader pattern of scrutiny the administration has applied to elite universities. That scrutiny has focused on how schools responded to campus protests during the 2023-2024 school year.
Harvard has framed the broader dispute as an attack on academic independence. The administration has cast its actions as necessary enforcement of civil rights law on campus. Thursday’s dismissal does not resolve that larger funding battle, but it removes one legal avenue the government had been pursuing.
It remains unclear whether the Trump administration will appeal Stearns’ ruling or refile a narrower version of the claims. Harvard has not issued an extended statement beyond confirming the dismissal. The university’s broader funding dispute with Washington remains unresolved as the fall semester approaches.
