Trump administration seeks $1B settlement from UCLA, White House official says

The Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said Friday, weeks after the Department of Justice accused the school of antisemitism and other civil rights violations.

UCLA is the first public university to be targeted by a widespread funding freeze over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action.

President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against elite private colleges. In recent weeks, the administration has struck deals with Brown University for $50 million and Columbia University for $221 million but has explored larger settlements, such as with Harvard University.

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The White House official did not detail any additional demands the administration has made to UCLA or elaborate on the settlement amount. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration suspended $584 million in federal grants for UCLA, the university said this week. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division issued a finding that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.”

The university had drawn widespread criticism for how it handled dispersing an encampment of Israel-Hamas war protesters in 2024. Jewish students said demonstrators in the encampment blocked them from getting to class. One night, counterprotesters attacked the encampment, throwing traffic cones and firing pepper spray, with fighting that continued for hours, injuring more than a dozen people, before police stepped in. The next day, after hundreds defied orders to leave, more than 200 people were arrested.

The University of California’s president, James B. Milliken, said in a statement Friday that the university was reviewing a document it “just received” from the Department of Justice.

“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission,” Milliken said. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”

This would not be the university’s first settlement over the 2024 protests. Last month, UCLA reached a $6 million settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued, arguing that the university violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to block their access to classes and other areas on campus in 2024.

The settlement comes nearly a year after a preliminary injunction was issued, marking the first time a U.S. judge had ruled against a university over their handling of on-campus demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza.

UCLA initially had argued that it had no legal responsibility over the issue because protesters, not the university, blocked Jewish students’ access to areas. The university also worked with law enforcement to thwart attempts to set up new protest camps.

But U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi disagreed and ordered UCLA to create a plan to protect Jewish students on campus. The University of California, one of the nation’s largest public university systems, has since created systemwide campus guidelines on protests and has said it is committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations.

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As part of the settlement, UCLA said it will contribute $2.3 million to eight organizations that combat antisemitism and support the university’s Jewish community. It also has created an Office of Campus and Community Safety, instituting new policies to manage protests on campus.

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, whose Jewish father and grandparents fled Nazi Germany to Mexico and whose wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, launched an initiative to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.

The Trump administration has used its control of federal funding to push for reforms at elite colleges that the president decries as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism. The administration also has launched investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.

Last month Columbia University agreed to pay $200 million as part of a settlement to resolve investigations into the government’s allegations that the school violated federal antidiscrimination laws. The agreement also restores more than $400 million in research grants.

The Trump administration plans to use its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation.

AP reporters Jocelyn Gecker and Julie Watson contributed to this report.