American universities are facing a new threat from the Trump administration, which intends to leverage a civil anti-fraud statute to withhold federal funding from colleges that promote diversity and inclusion policies, as announced by the Department of Justice on Monday.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated in a memo that the False Claims Act will be enforced “when a federal contractor or recipient of federal funds knowingly violates civil rights laws.”
Blanche’s two-page memo outlines that such violations could include permitting antisemitism on campus or allowing transgender women to compete in sports or use restrooms aligning with their gender identity. Furthermore, institutions cannot implement DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs “that assign benefits or burdens on race, ethnicity, or national origin,” he wrote.
Harvard University has recently renamed its DEI office as its conflict with the Trump administration intensifies on multiple fronts.
The memo indicates that the Department of Justice will broadly pursue fines and damages in cases where violations are identified, and will also consider criminal enforcement for certain breaches. The False Claims Act, dating back to the Civil War, allows the government to recover funds up to three times the damages incurred, in addition to penalties, according to the DOJ.
The law also permits private citizens to file lawsuits alleging government fraud and to retain a portion of any recovered federal funds, the memo notes, adding: “The Department strongly encourages these lawsuits.”
The Justice Department’s announcement is part of President Donald Trump’s broader offensive against diversity initiatives. This includes the Education Department advising 60 colleges that they are under investigation for potential “antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” The White House is also withholding billions of dollars in crucial education funds, some of which are now facing legal challenges.
An attorney who advises colleges told CNN that halting diversity efforts is causing confusion for institutions still attempting to discern what the federal government will permit. The Trump administration has denounced DEI practices, designed to advance racial, gender, class, and other forms of representation in public spaces, as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”
Jodie Ferise, a higher education attorney and former faculty member at the University of Indianapolis, commented: “It just ends up being a kind of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ proposition.”
Universities that previously promoted their campus diversity to prospective students and faculty as a recruitment tool—often maintaining public “dashboards” with demographic information—are now being advised to de-emphasize these efforts.
“There’s no way I would advise a client to maintain a dashboard like that now, and that makes me sad,” Ferise stated. “Those dashboards were in themselves a hiring tool: What that shows a diverse candidate is this is a place that maybe really wants me, a place where I could thrive.”
Attempts to placate the White House have met with limited success.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi supported the initiative unveiled on Monday, warning universities that promote DEI policies are “putting their access to federal funds at risk,” according to a statement.
However, while dozens of schools nationwide have already sought to appease the administration—some abruptly ending DEI initiatives, laying off university staff, and prohibiting the use of terms like “equality” and “gender” to avoid controversy—such efforts have not always protected them from substantial funding cuts.
In an endeavor to recover its more than $2 billion in blocked federal funding, Harvard University renamed its diversity, equity, and inclusion office to the “Office of Community and Campus Life” in late April.
The Ivy League institution in Massachusetts also declared it would not host or fund affinity group celebrations during commencement, after the Education Department threatened further funding cuts if it did not cancel graduation celebrations that could segregate students by race.
Despite these measures, the Trump administration subsequently announced an additional $450 million in federal funding cuts.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has also initiated an investigation into Harvard, the Wall Street Journal reported, with a Republican commissioner suggesting that the university’s efforts to diversify its faculty and designate scholarships for “underrepresented minorities” might constitute illegal discrimination.
Attacks on Harvard by the Trump administration have been escalating for months, with a timeline of the dispute providing further context.
A spokesperson for the commission informed CNN that legal constraints prevent them from publicly confirming any investigation. A Harvard spokesperson did not address questions about the reported investigation and referred CNN to published comments from President Alan Garber, who stated, “We do not have quotas, whether based on race or ethnicity or any other characteristic.”
According to The New York Times, in a letter to Harvard last week, the Justice Department indicated that the Trump administration was investigating whether the school’s admissions process had been used to defraud the government by failing to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action.
The letter, reviewed by the Times, confirmed that the investigation was launched under the False Claims Act.
