The gavel came down hard in Manhattan as a federal judge tossed a lawsuit brought by Columbia University faculty unions, who were hoping to stop Trump administration-driven funding cuts and controversial campus policy mandates.
The courtroom drama unfolded over claims that Washington strong-armed Columbia University—threatening millions in federal funds unless it reshaped student discipline, upped surveillance, and restructured its Middle Eastern studies department. But U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil wasn’t having it.
Her ruling: the professors’ unions—American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers—simply didn’t have the legal authority to sue. Columbia University itself wasn’t even a plaintiff. “Conspicuously absent,” she noted, hammering home the point.
“Democracy doesn’t run on judicial panic,” Vyskocil wrote in a sharply worded opinion. “Federal judges aren’t in the business of micromanaging executive power just because someone knocks loudly enough.”
Undeterred, the unions say they’ll appeal. “This isn’t just about Columbia,” said professors’ union president Todd Wolfson, “this is about a national power grab disguised as education policy. And we’re not backing down.”
Vyskocil’s ruling came just under two weeks after the U.S. Department of Education warned Columbia its accreditation might be on the line—allegedly due to campus safety issues involving pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The university, under pressure, has since agreed to ramp up security and reexamine its regional studies programs.
Columbia was the first elite institution in Trump’s crosshairs in his broader push to reorient higher education, with others like Harvard mounting their own courtroom resistance.
The dismissed lawsuit initially challenged $400 million in threatened cuts and later expanded to cover over $5 billion in federal grants and contracts. But Vyskocil didn’t buy the unions’ argument that the administration’s actions caused concrete harm.
Bottom line: the courtroom door may be closed for now, but the legal fight—and the political theater surrounding it—is far from over.
