The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late Friday in a sharply worded decision.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to UC based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.

The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.

It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.

In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”

“Agency officials, as well as the President and Vice President, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.

She added, “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”

At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights probes, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment.”

Messages sent to the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice after hours Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.

University of California President James B. Milliken has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.

UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the University.”

The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-Western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment,” among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.

The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50 million and Columbia University for $221 million.

Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke.’”

Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of Plaintiffs’ members under the First Amendment.”

She cited efforts to force the UCs to screen international students based on “‘anti-Western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.

President Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.

His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has officially dropped three charges out of dozens in Georgia’s election interference case against President Trump and others.

On Friday, McAfee ordered that Counts 14, 15, and 27, conspiracy and criminal attempt to file false documents and filing false documents, respectively, should be dismissed. Mr. Trump had been charged with two of the counts, 15 and 27.

McAfee had signaled in September 2024 that he wanted to remove the charges, arguing that they lie beyond the state’s jurisdiction. He was not able to officially drop the charges until the case was remanded to him, which did not happen until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s disqualification was finalized by the Georgia courts.

In Friday’s ruling, he said that the defendants’ remaining motions challenging the indictment over the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution were denied, meaning only the three were quashed at this time.

The judge had previously quashed six counts in the indictment, including three against Mr. Trump, in March 2024.

Even with the counts removed, 32 remain, including an overarching racketeering charge brought against the remaining 15 defendants.

Earlier today, attorney Steve Sadow, who is representing Mr. Trump in Georgia, said that his legal team “remain confident that a fair and impartial review will lead to a dismissal of the case” against the president.

A new prosecutor in the Georgia Trump election case

The ruling comes on the same day that Peter J. Skandalakis, the director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, announced he would be filling the position left vacant by Willis after she was disqualified from the case.

Skandalakis said he had appointed himself to lead the prosecution after his organization could not find another prosecutor before McAfee’s Friday deadline. If a prosecutor had not been found, the judge said he would have dismissed all charges.

“The public has a legitimate interest in the outcome of this case,” he wrote. “Accordingly, it is important that someone make an informed and transparent determination about how best to proceed.” 

Skandalakis said Willis’ office delivered 101 boxes of documents on Oct. 29 and an eight-terabyte hard drive with the full investigative file on Nov. 6. Although he hasn’t completed his review, he took on the case so he can finish assessing it and decide what to do next.

Though Mr. Trump announced pardons earlier this week for people accused of backing his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — including those charged in Georgia — presidential pardons only apply to federal charges, and Skandalakis has said that has no bearing on these state charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.