Professors’ Labor Unions Lack Standing to Challenge Government’s Cancellation of Grants and Contracts to Columbia

As the Supreme Court has stressed, “plaintiffs must demonstrate standing for each claim that they press against each defendant, and for each form of relief that they seek.” The principal relief Plaintiffs seek is a judicial order commanding executive agencies to pay out money to non-party Columbia pursuant to grants and contracts that were previously awarded by executive agencies to non-party Columbia. However, as set forth above, neither Plaintiffs nor their members were ever the recipients of those grants and contracts. “Absent a contractual relationship there can be no contractual remedy.” Hillside Metro Assocs., LLC v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, Nat. Ass’n (2d Cir. 2014) (holding that a party lacks prudential standing to enforce a contract “to which it is neither a party nor a third-party beneficiary”).

{Plaintiffs’ members may have benefited from federal funds, but “[p]roving third- party beneficiary status requires that the contract terms clearly evidence an intent to permit enforcement by the third party in question.” Here, Plaintiffs offer no evidence that their members were third-party beneficiaries to any grants or contracts. Rather, the relevant evidence demonstrates that, for example, the NIH awarded grants to Columbia alone (which, in turn, designated the principal investigator on the grant from among its faculty). With respect to enforcement, Plaintiffs’ own evidence suggests that Columbia had to conduct “appeals” of “the University’s federal research portfolio” and was merely enlisting “help to be prepared to file such appeals” from Plaintiffs’ members. This evidence suggests that non-party Columbia’s grants and contracts did not contemplate enforcement by Plaintiffs’ members.}

{Relatedly, Plaintiffs purport to assert a claim pursuant to the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, but, as Plaintiffs themselves quote the Second Circuit explaining, that doctrine prohibits the government from placing “a condition on the receipt of a benefit or subsidy that infringes upon the recipient’s constitutionally protected rights.” Neither Plaintiffs nor their members are “the recipient” of any of the grants or contracts at issue in this case.} …

Furthermore, with respect to each of their numerous claims, Plaintiffs fail to show any cognizable injury to themselves and fail to show injuries to their members that are fairly traceable to any defendant. Organizations, such as Plaintiffs, may assert standing in two ways. First, an organization may assert “standing in its own right to seek judicial relief from injury to itself.” Second, an organization may “assert ‘standing solely as the representative of its members.'” The second “approach is known as representational … standing.” Id. To establish representational standing, “an organization must demonstrate that ‘(a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.'”

Plaintiffs unconvincingly assert that “[e]ach Plaintiff independently has” standing in its own right “because Defendants’ actions have ‘directly affected and interfered with [Plaintiffs’] core business activities,’ not merely their ‘abstract social interests.'” Plaintiffs’ core business is to be labor unions. Query how many of the “1.8 million” dues-paying members of the AFT, including nurses and paraprofessionals, believe its core functions include paying a cavalry of lawyers to argue the “transcendent” importance of taxpayer funding for an elite university. ^{According to the docket sheet, at least eleven attorneys represent Plaintiffs in this case.}

To be sure, Plaintiffs submit evidence that the AAUP is not only a labor union but also a “membership association” with a “mission” to “advance academic freedom.” Nevertheless, Article III standing requires “far more” than an alleged “setback” to the AAUP’s interest in academic freedom. To establish an injury-in-fact to itself, the AAUP must show a concrete harm that has actually occurred or is “certainly impending.” The AAUP submits that it has suffered an injury because it has “diverted internal resources of staff time and expenses to assist Columbia members in the [Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies, i.e.,] MESAAS Department and other departments prepare to respond to the Trump Administration’s demand[] that the MESAAS Department be put under academic receivership, and to respond to the internal governance steps Columbia has announced.”

Fatally for Plaintiffs, the Supreme Court has held that “an organization that has not suffered a concrete injury caused by a defendant’s action cannot spend its way into standing simply by expending money to gather information and advocate against the defendant’s action.” The AAUP cannot establish an injury-in-fact merely because it elected to expend resources preparing to respond to a potential development that has not occurred and is not “certainly impending.” The Columbia MESAAS Department is not under academic receivership. As discussed further below, any resources Plaintiffs expended “respond[ing] to the internal governance steps Columbia has announced” are not injuries traceable to Defendants. Neither the ATF nor the AAUP has demonstrated a cognizable injury to itself.

Turning to representational standing, Plaintiffs fail to establish that any injuries their members may have suffered are fairly traceable to Defendants. As noted above, the Court does find that some of Plaintiffs members used federal grants to Columbia for their academic work. The loss of professional opportunities or income may certainly constitute an injury in some cases. However, here, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that it makes a difference to their members whether the funding for their research and salaries comes from American taxpayers, non-party Columbia’s multi-billion-dollar endowment, the largess of Columbia’s donors, or the eye-popping tuition bills paid by Columbia students, including the Jewish students who apparently paid for the privilege of being threatened with violence on their way to class.

Indeed, Plaintiffs’ own evidence demonstrates that “Columbia has committed to providing salary coverage during this immediate period of uncertainty for personnel whose grants have been terminated.” Plaintiffs’ own evidence also demonstrates that Columbia has relied on “generous alumni” to alleviate certain “unanticipated expenses.” Insofar as Columbia elects not to use its various private resources to fund specific research and personnel, Plaintiffs’ members’ quarrel is with Columbia.

Plaintiffs likewise fail to establish representational standing based on the alleged chilling of their members’ speech and academic freedom. The numerous declarations in which Plaintiffs’ members (and other individuals affiliated with Columbia with whom Plaintiffs appear to have no relationship whatsoever) attest to their “subjective” feelings of being chilled are not sufficient for standing. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that Defendants have harmed them because of their protected First Amendment activities or threatened a specific, imminent future harm for such protected activities.

Plaintiffs contend that their “members fear that their speech and scholarship, if not aligned with the Trump administration, could trigger additional punitive funding freezes” and “demands by Defendants that their academic departments, too, be placed in academic receivership.” Plaintiffs also contend that Columbia’s announced reforms reflect Columbia simply “acquiesc[ing] to” Defendants’ “demands.” Plaintiffs’ contentions about their members’ fears, Defendants’ possible future actions (and the purportedly punitive nature of such actions), and Columbia’s actions are all purely subjective and speculative. Evidence in the record, including Plaintiffs’ own evidence, contradicts Plaintiffs’ account.

As discussed above, Defendants submit evidence that they have terminated funding to Columbia because such funding was used in ways that was no longer consistent with agency priorities and for the convenience of the government. Plaintiffs posit that any “reasonable person would understand that Defendants’ actions” were “directed squarely at suppressing speech, association, and academic freedom rights.” According to Plaintiffs, Defendants acted to punish “any support for Palestinian freedom and an anti-war perspective.” However, evidence submitted by both sides supports finding that the defendant executive agencies were responding to incidents other than protected speech and activities.

Indeed, Executive Branch communications about the termination of funding to Columbia expressly cited Columbia’s protracted failure to respond to the occupation of an academic building, “Hamilton Hall,” and other “disruption[s] of [the] teaching, research, and campus life” that the taxpayers were supposedly funding. March 13 Letter; see NIH Letter (“Columbia’s ongoing inaction in the face of repeated and severe harassment of Jewish students has ground day- to-day campus operations to a halt” and “deprived Jewish students” and others “of learning and research opportunities”). Columbia’s own reports, which Plaintiffs put into evidence, identified incidents of “physical harm to students.” Rosenthal Decl., Ex. 53 at 2–3 (reporting that Jewish students “were on the receiving end of … physical assaults,” and there was “a recurring lack of enforcement of existing University rules and policies”). This evidence does not support the subjective feelings of Plaintiffs’ members that funding has been or will be cut to punish protected speech and scholarship. Thus, in light of the Supreme Court’s instruction to perform an “especially rigorous” standing inquiry before proceeding to the merits of a claim that “an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional,” the Court concludes that Plaintiffs fall short of demonstrating that their members have experienced more than a subjective feeling of chill in response to actions by any defendant.

Relatedly, as noted above, Plaintiffs fall short with respect to traceability. Based on Plaintiffs’ own evidence, it was Columbia, not any of the defendants, that reached out to Plaintiffs’ members to advise them that their scholarship was not aligned with the funding priorities of the Executive Branch based on Columbia’s own “analysis,” which analysis Columbia had performed “[e]arlier [in the] year,” before the termination of any funding and before the March 13 Letter. That email expressly was unrelated to any “notifications” about “antisemitic actions.”

Crucially, Columbia had been planning the reforms it announced in its March 21 Memo, which was about antisemitism on campus, for “many months” before any of the defendants made any demands. Moreover, Columbia did not merely implement the steps listed in the March 13 Letter from executive agencies, but rather exercised independent judgment. For example, as noted above, Columbia did not comply with the demand to place the MESAAS Department under academic receivership but, instead, appointed a “new Senior Vice Provost” to review Columbia’s whole “portfolio of programs in regional areas,” starting with the Middle East, with goals to “promot[e] excellence” and “intellectual diversity.” Such “independent action of [a] third party not before the court” breaks the causal chain between Defendants and any alleged injury. Insofar as Plaintiffs’ members feel chilled by any actual changes that have taken place at Columbia, such as the review of the MESAAS Department, Plaintiffs have not shown that Columbia’s actions were merely the “predictable” response to the demands of the executive agency defendants.

Furthermore, Plaintiffs stress that “[d]espite Columbia’s compliance,” funding has not been restored. Yet Plaintiffs apparently fail to grasp that one possible inference from this state of affairs is that funding cuts were made and maintained not to punish speech but because, for example, it is not consistent with the priorities of the NIH under the current, democratically- elected President, to continue to fund Columbia’s research into the impact of climate change on the mental health of women in East Africa. Declining to fund such research is not a First Amendment injury….

The Court simply notes that the Supreme Court’s recent, albeit brief, opinion in Department of Education v. California (2025), raises several additional hurdles for Plaintiffs. As noted above, the Supreme Court characterized DOE “grants” as contracts and ruled that, as such, the district court in that case likely lacked jurisdiction to order relief because “the APA’s limited waiver of immunity does not extend to orders to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money,” and “the Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims [exclusive] jurisdiction over suits based on … contract[s] with the United States.” In all events, the principal relief Plaintiffs seek is money, and it is well-established that a party cannot show the irreparable harm required to obtain a preliminary injunction where “money damages” can provide redress.

The Court also notes, with respect to the merits, that Plaintiffs posit, without citation to any authority, that the Executive Branch may not count repudiating antisemitism among “agency priorities” within the meaning of 2 C.F.R. § 200.340(a)(4). The Court is not aware of authority for that particular limitation on agency priorities. Rather, all of Plaintiffs’ arguments that Defendants violated the APA (and the separation of powers) by failing to comply with procedural requirements for cutting funding pursuant to Title VI simply presuppose that Title VI is the exclusive vehicle by which the Executive Branch may withdraw financial support for an institution that allows religious discrimination.

The Court urges Plaintiffs, and the amici who decry Defendants’ alleged failure to follow Title VI to the letter, to review the text of that statute. Title VI does not mention religion. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000d (“No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”). As such, it strikes this Court as unlikely that Title VI is the sole and exclusive “legal tool[]” available to a President who instructs executive agencies to prioritize “combat[ting] anti-Semitism … on university and college campuses.”