Labor unions representing thousands of University of California (UC) faculty members and employees have sued the Trump administration following a federal funding freeze they described as part of an illegal effort to impose conservative views on the public university system.

The coalition includes the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and more than a dozen UC campus faculty associations. The labor groups are asking a federal judge to bar the administration from conditioning UC’s federal funding on acceptance of its demands and to declare the practice unconstitutional.

Their complaint, filed on Sept. 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, focuses on a series of actions the groups said are meant to compel reforms across hiring, admissions, athletics, and scholarships.

At the end of July, three federal agencies—the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Energy Department—suspended $564 million in research funding to UC–Los Angeles (UCLA), citing noncompliance with federal laws and terms and conditions for federal awards. Specifically, the agencies stated that UCLA has adhered to “illegal affirmative action” policies, failed to do enough to address anti-Semitic bias and bullying on campus, and discriminated against women by allowing transgender students to compete in women’s sports and access women-only spaces.

The suspension followed a Department of Justice (DOJ) notice to UCLA alleging violations of civil rights law over the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests in spring 2024. The DOJ stated that Jewish and Israeli students suffered from “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment” by members of a pro-Palestinian encampment, which lasted about eight days before protesters clashed with pro-Israel counterprotesters, prompting administrators to call in the Los Angeles Police Department to dismantle the camps.

According to UC President James Milliken, the DOJ has proposed a settlement that would require UC to pay a $1 billion fine. Although other demands have not been fully publicized, the Sept. 16 complaint states that they likely resemble those in the deals reached to restore suspended funding at Brown and Columbia universities, including demands that the schools provide admissions data, end race-based scholarships, tighten protest policies, cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and reserve women’s sports and facilities for women.

In a post on social media, the labor groups characterized the administration’s actions as “the illegal and coercive use of civil-rights laws to attack the University of California system and the rights of [its] members.” In the complaint, they accused President Donald Trump of seeking to establish “ideological dominance” over liberal California campuses.

The UC system, which is not a party to the Sept. 16 lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment on the litigation. In a systemwide message on Sept. 15, Milliken said his team is working with both state and federal officials to resolve the funding freeze.

According to Milliken, UC receives about $17 billion in federal funding each year, including $5.7 billion for research and program support. He called the cuts among the “gravest threats” in the university’s history and warned of a “detrimental ripple effect across the entire state economy.”

UC has taken some steps aligned with the Trump administration’s demands amid the standoff. On Aug. 6, the system announced a policy granting federal immigration agents access to its hospitals and clinics. More recently, on Sept. 4, UC–Berkeley notified 160 faculty, staff, and students that their names appeared in documents provided to the administration as part of its investigation into alleged anti-Semitism on campus.

The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit. Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said that an investigation had found “concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA” that warranted “severe accountability from the institution.”

“DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system,” Bondi said in July.