The ACLU of Puerto Rico and legal organizations urge the U.S. Court of Appeals to maintain the block on President Trump’s unconstitutional attacks against Harvard

BOSTON – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Chapter of Puerto Rico joined more than a dozen legal organizations that urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to uphold the district court order that blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to seize ideological control of Harvard University.

The federal government decided to withhold billions of dollars in research funding after Harvard University refused to investigate students, faculty, and academic programs for “ideological diversity”, and to submit certain departments, like the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, or centers that differ from the government’s stance to an external audit.

On July 9, 2025, the ACLU and countless other organizations filed an amicus curiae brief in favor of Harvard’s motion for summary judgment. On September 3, 2025, the federal court for the District of Massachusetts blocked the government’s attacks against Harvard. The judge signaled that the Trump administration attempted to “force Harvard to better manifest the government’s favored worldview,” in clear violation of the university’s freedom of speech.

The following organizations jointly filed an amicus curiae brief to request that the appellate court uphold the lower court’s ruling that declares the actions of the administration as unconstitutional:

• ACLU
• ACLU of Massachusetts
• ACLU of Maine
• ACLU of New Hampshire
• ACLU of Puerto Rico
• ACLU of Rhode Island
• Cato Institute
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Knight First Amendment Institute
• National Coalition Against Censorship
• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• Rutherford Institute

In presenting the arguments with the rest of the organizations, the ACLU of Puerto Rico also called on universities of the archipelago to not give into Trump’s unconstitutional pressures, but rather to defend their freedom of speech and protections for faculty, students, and the university community at large.

“Access to education, teaching, and the development of knowledge in our institutions of higher education cannot depend on the ideological preferences of a president,” stated attorney Fermín Arraiza Navas, legal director at the ACLU of Puerto Rico.

In the case of Harvard, the federal government attempted to coerce the University into hiring professors, admitting students, and conducting research in accordance with the government’s preferred ideology, basing federal funding on an ideologically driven condition and making this unconstitutional. “The administration’s conduct is unconstitutional any way you slice it,” the brief asserts.

The organizations also argued that “The First Amendment principle of academic freedom prohibits the government from imposing ideological admissions, hiring, and programmatic requirements on colleges and universities.” The coercion and reprisal which violate the First Amendment in this case are all the more serious because they target an institution of higher education, whose decisions over who to teach, what to teach, and who should teach are protected by the First Amendment.

“The government’s abuse of its funding power here is meant as a message to all of us: get in ideological line or the government will go after you,” stated Vera Eidelman, senior staff attorney for the ACLU. “This ideological bullying is an abuse of the executive’s power, and the appellate court should affirm that it violates the First Amendment, or the floodgates of retaliation and coercion will open to us all.”

Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said that the “Trump administration's attempt to bully Harvard into submission is a brazen attack on free expression and academic freedom, which are essential pillars of our democracy.”

For a view of the full details of the case, click here.