UCLA faces $1 billion demand to restore frozen federal grant funding

The Trump administration is seeking $1 billion from UCLA to settle discrimination and antisemitism allegations in exchange for restoring more than half a billion dollars in frozen grant funding to the university. 

The proposed agreement sent to the school Friday requires UCLA to pay the federal government $1 billion over multiple installments, along with establishing a $172 million claims fund for alleged victims of violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The Trump administration has already suspended $584 million in federal grants from UCLA after the Justice Department announced it found the school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, UC President James Milliken said the university system had received the document with the offer and was reviewing it. 

“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good-faith dialogue with the (Justice) Department to protect the university and its critical research mission,” Milliken said. “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.

“Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the U.S. economy and protect our national security.”

The move came a day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized settlements between Columbia and Brown universities, both Ivy League schools, and the Trump administration. 

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“We’re not Brown, we’re not Columbia, and I’m not going to be governor if we act like that,” Newsom said while speaking in San Francisco. “Period. Full stop, I will fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Columbia will pay more than $220 million to resolve multiple federal civil rights investigations, including $21 million to settle claims of antisemitic employment discrimination against Jewish faculty after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. 

Brown will shell out $50 million over a decade to state workforce development organizations as part of a deal struck with the U.S. government.

In July, UCLA agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Jewish students and faculty members over the school’s handling of anti-Israel protests, including allowing protesters to ban Jews from a part of the campus known as a “Jew Exclusion Zone.”

The lawsuit was brought last year by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which accused UCLA of “aiding and abetting” an antisemitic culture, including “segregating Jewish students and preventing them from accessing the heart of campus.”