Judge Throws Out the Justice Department's Antisemitism Suit Against Harvard as 'Too Isolated and Episodic'

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Massachusetts on Aug. 13 granted Harvard University's motion to dismiss the Justice Department's civil rights lawsuit accusing the school of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students. In a four-page order, Stearns wrote that the incidents the government cited were, "singly and collectively, too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day." He also found the amended complaint devoid of factual allegations postdating the administration's required notice to the university, with the remaining instances drawn from 2023 and 2024.

The suit, filed in March, had sought to cut off future federal funding to Harvard and claw back grant money already awarded. It was one strand of a broader campaign of funding freezes, visa actions and investigations directed at the university, and its dismissal narrows the legal route for converting civil rights findings into financial leverage over a private institution.

The Justice Department said it disagreed with the ruling and is assessing next steps, and pointed to a continuing antisemitism investigation by its Civil Rights Division. Harvard has called the suit pretextual and retaliatory.