In the three months since President Trump returned to power, his administration has prized speed and shock value.
Harvard University is wagering that White House strategy could be used against it.
The 51-page lawsuit the university filed on Monday, intended to fight the administration’s freeze of billions in federal funding, hinges largely on a statute that provides specific timelines for federal agencies to draft rules and impose penalties.
This wonky workhorse of American law, known as the Administrative Procedure Act, has been cited in a majority of lawsuits filed this year against the Trump administration, including complaints seeking to reverse funding reductions to the United States Agency for International Development, local schools and Voice of America.
While Mr. Trump’s strategy has generated headlines, the outcomes of these cases will determine whether that approach will also produce lasting policy victories.
In Harvard’s case, the university is seeking to fend off accusations of discrimination from the administration’s antisemitism task force, a group that was put together to move faster than typical federal civil rights investigators.
The administration preferred to work with Harvard and encouraged the university to “come to the negotiating table in good faith” instead of grandstanding, said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman. “Harvard is showboating,” Mr. Fields said. “But they know more than anyone that not playing ball is going to hurt their team. They need to be in compliance with federal law in order to get federal funds.”
Harvard turned to the administrative procedure law after facing a crush of government demands that included, among other conditions, audits of its faculty for plagiarism and political views, along with changes to admissions and hiring. The university argues that Washington is seeking to exert unconstitutional sway — and that its effort is defined by sloppiness that blasted past due process.
In some ways, the administration’s zeal for speed has already proven costly. The list of demands emailed to the university on April 11 was sent by mistake, Trump officials have said. But while there have been differing accounts about why the email was mishandled, the demands were so onerous that Harvard officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.
Trump officials tried to reopen negotiations in recent days, but Harvard refused. Instead, the university has accused the administration of breaking the law.
“Defendants,” Harvard wrote in the lawsuit, “failed to comply with their own regulations before freezing Harvard’s federal financial assistance.”
In another section, Harvard notes that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids certain kinds of discrimination, requires a detailed process before it can be a basis for freezing money. The Trump administration, Harvard says, did “the precise opposite.”
Elsewhere in its complaint, the university contends that the government’s moves against it were “arbitrary and capricious” and could not be explained, or explained reasonably.
For universities putting up legal fights against the Trump administration, and familiar with deliberative processes that traditionally govern federal grants, the procedure act may be their most essential tool.
In February, the law was the foundation of a challenge to the administration’s effort to change how universities are reimbursed for overhead costs related to National Institutes of Health research. Last week, universities and their industry associations turned to the law again after the Department of Energy sought to cut research funding. Harvard is now embracing much of the same playbook.
But for an administration that has signaled it would like to make an example of a top university — all the better to cow other universities — the deluge of abrupt pressure is part of the point.
To some of the administration’s allies, the government’s haste to curb what it contends is endemic campus antisemitism is a virtue. The federal government’s civil rights investigations are ordinarily long and steeped in procedures and policies that, the administration’s allies contend, can make bad situations worse.
“My greater worry has been with the slowness of investigations, historically, and with the great amount of time in which students are left without recourse or remedy,” Kenneth L. Marcus, the Education Department’s top civil rights official during Mr. Trump’s first term, said in an interview before the administration’s fight with Harvard fully erupted.
Catherine Lhamon, who was assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department during the Obama and Biden administrations, said that the process was too long for prosecuting civil rights violations, particularly when infractions affected students directly. But she added that those were issues for Congress to consider.
“Congress decided at a crucible moment in our nation’s history that there should be federal civil rights protections and a pretty onerous process for the government to say those laws have been violated and federal funds should not be spent,” Ms. Lhamon said. “What we’re seeing now is what Congress was worried about when those principles were written, which is that somebody might try to weaponize these particular protections.”
Harvard has also reached for concepts of American law — like First Amendment protections — that are less about bureaucratic procedures and easier sells in the still-essential court of public opinion.
But even part of Harvard’s First Amendment argument partially relies on the procedure act, which says that an action by a federal agency that runs “contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity” is illegal.
“In terms of what Harvard is specifically doing, it is pushing back against agency action, and we have an entire legal framework,” said Osamudia R. James, a professor at the University of North Carolina whose specialties include administrative law.
Harvard officials are hoping that the government’s speedy tactics will steer the case toward a speedy end. The university’s lawsuit asked the Federal District Court in Massachusetts to expedite the case.
So far, Harvard has not requested an interim step, like a preliminary injunction. Although the university has not ruled out seeking some kind of short-term relief, its early approach is a signal that it believes the court may be able to act definitively and quickly on grounds that may not require much spectacle.
To make its case, Harvard has hired a roster of legal heavyweights, many of them with deep experience in Washington and close ties to the conservative establishment.
William A. Burck, who worked in George W. Bush’s White House and now is an outside ethics adviser to Mr. Trump’s company and sits on the Fox Corporation’s board, was the first lawyer listed in the lawsuit. Robert K. Hur, the U.S. attorney in Maryland during Mr. Trump’s first term and later the special counsel who investigated President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s handling of classified documents, came next.
Other lawyers representing Harvard include Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, who was one of Mr. Bush’s Supreme Court litigators; Steven P. Lehotsky, who worked in Mr. Bush’s Justice Department and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia; Mary Elizabeth Miller, who worked for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.; and Katherine C. Yarger, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.
Jonathan F. Cohn was a deputy assistant attorney general during Mr. Bush’s administration. Scott A. Keller is a former solicitor general in Texas who later worked as chief counsel for Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican.
The outcome of the legal case may be beside the point, Professor James said.
“If you lose ultimately at the court but millions of people now believe that all of these institutions are hotbeds of discrimination, that they don’t provide any benefits to the communities in which they operate, that they don’t produce anything of value,” she said, adding, “that might be a win if you are hostile to higher education institutions.”
Seamus Hughes contributed research.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.
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