Harvard is back in federal court after the U.S. Justice Department filed suit seeking admissions records the department says are necessary to determine whether the university has complied with the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in admissions.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Massachusetts, the Justice Department said Harvard refused to provide the records the department demanded as part of its investigation into whether the Ivy League school stopped using affirmative action after the court’s 2023 ruling. The department asked a judge to order Harvard to turn over the documents, arguing that the university’s noncompliance “thwarted” the government’s efforts to investigate potential discrimination.
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that Harvard’s refusal is “a red flag.” “If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” Dhillon said.
Harvard, in a statement, said it has been responding to the government’s requests and that it is in compliance with the Supreme Court decision barring affirmative action in admissions. The university said it would “continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions” that it described as initiated after Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to what it called “unlawful government overreach.”
The case is the latest development in what the Justice Department described as an effort to ensure compliance after the Supreme Court decision, and it also reflects a broader dispute between the Trump administration and Harvard. Trump has repeatedly raised demands tied to Harvard’s federal funding and, according to the Justice Department’s description of the dispute, Harvard has faced billions of dollars in funding cuts and other sanctions after it rejected demands from the administration last year.
The Justice Department opened a compliance review into Harvard’s admissions practices in April, the day the White House issued a series of sweeping demands aligned with Trump’s priorities. The agency told Harvard to hand over five years of admissions data for undergraduate applicants and also demanded records for Harvard’s medical and law schools.
According to the lawsuit, the Justice Department sought a wide range of admissions information, including applicants’ grades, test scores, essays, extracurricular activities and admissions outcomes. The department also demanded that Harvard provide applicants’ race and ethnicity, and it set a deadline of April 25, 2025, saying Harvard had not provided the data.
Justice Department officials said they need the information to determine whether Harvard continued considering applicants’ race in admissions decisions. The Supreme Court barred affirmative action in admissions in 2023 following lawsuits that challenged the practice at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina, and Trump officials have accused colleges of continuing the practice after the ruling.
The lawsuit also comes amid other federal efforts to press colleges for similar admissions data, with the Education Department planning to collect more detailed admissions information after Trump signed an action suggesting schools were ignoring the Supreme Court decision. The administration has said such steps target discrimination it argues persists in admissions decisions.
Beyond the admissions-data dispute, Trump officials have said they are taking action against Harvard over allegations of anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard officials have said they are facing what they describe as unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to adopt the administration’s ideological views, and the administration is appealing judge decisions that sided with Harvard in two related lawsuits.
The dispute between Trump and Harvard had appeared to be winding down last summer, after Trump repeatedly said the two sides were finalizing a deal to restore Harvard’s federal funding. But the deal did not materialize, and Trump rekindled the conflict this month when he said Harvard must pay $1 billion as part of any deal—double what he previously demanded.