The Trump administration’s letter in January ran dozens of pages, and it included its demands for San Jose State University. Because the university had allowed a transgender athlete to play on women’s volleyball teams years ago, the Education Department wanted the university to rewrite its record books, apologize to the player’s teammates and proclaim that it would recognize only two sexes.
The school — and the California State University system, one of the nation’s largest — said no, citing its adherence to the law and its desire to be welcoming to all students. Now the government’s pressure campaign and the university’s legal strategy are testing the Trump administration’s view that it can enforce its interpretation of the law years after events have unfolded.
An Education Department deadline for San Jose State to reach a settlement is expected to pass this weekend without an agreement, leaving the government to decide whether to start making good on its threat to strip the school of federal funding. But in a rare instance of a higher education institution challenging the Trump administration on its own, the 23-campus Cal State system has gone to court to accuse the government of “lawless overreach.”
“We have followed the law and cannot be punished for doing so,” Cynthia Teniente-Matson, the president of San Jose State, wrote in an open letter this month to the university community. San Jose State declined to make Dr. Teniente-Matson available for an interview.
University leaders have given little indication that they will meet the 10-day deadline for a deal that Linda McMahon, the education secretary, announced last week as she warned that the Trump administration could choke off federal funds.
An Education Department spokesman declined to comment.
During the first 60 weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term, the Education Department has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into schools with transgender athletes or districts with policies that provide protections for transgender students.
The Education Department has targeted several schools where transgender athletes had played on teams before Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year. Among the first actions of his second term was a series of executive orders limiting protections for transgender people.
The administration has implied that these orders carry the weight of federal law and should override previous court rulings.
Cal State was a target of a lawsuit in 2024 by women’s volleyball players because San Jose State had allowed Blaire Fleming, a transgender woman, to participate. At the time, collegiate rules permitted transgender players on women’s teams if they pursued hormone therapy and did not exceed certain levels of testosterone, which is linked to increased muscle growth and speed.
A federal judge rebuffed the attempt to block Ms. Fleming from participating on the volleyball team. Judge S. Kato Crews, who was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said legal precedents had established that the protections in federal civil rights law and the 14th Amendment also applied to transgender people.
But the Trump administration opened a civil rights investigation into the university in February 2025 and concluded this January that San Jose State had violated Title IX protections for others on the team.
The administration has had some success in revisiting similar battles. Last year, it halted $175 million in research funding for the University of Pennsylvania, saying the Ivy League school had violated the law by supporting Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete on its women’s swim team. Ms. Thomas, the first openly transgender woman to win a swimming championship in the N.C.A.A.’s Division I, graduated from Penn in 2022.
Penn officials repeatedly pointed out that the university had been in compliance with rules and regulations when Ms. Thomas swam there — and that the N.C.A.A. had amended its policies after Mr. Trump’s executive orders. But the university ultimately negotiated a settlement with the Education Department, agreeing to the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights law. Penn removed Ms. Thomas from its swimming record book, apologized to her teammates and publicly pledged to abide by Mr. Trump’s executive orders on gender and sports.
Penn’s president, J. Larry Jameson, said in a statement at the time that the Trump administration’s attacks had left the university vulnerable to “significant and lasting implications,” a reference to the possibility of a loss of federal funding. The settlement did not explicitly mention cuts, but White House officials said afterward that the money would be restored.
The administration appears to be making greater demands of San Jose State, pressuring the university to make clear on its website that “there are only two sexes (female and male) because there are only two types of gametes (eggs and sperm)” and that “the sex of a human — female or male — is unchangeable.”
The university balked, with the Cal State system arguing in its lawsuit that Mr. Trump’s executive orders early last year “do not and cannot change what S.J.S.U. was obligated to do from 2022 to 2024.”
“The president does not have the authority to override judicial decisions interpreting the Constitution or federal statutes — much less to go back in time and change the rules that applied before he took office,” Cal State wrote in its complaint.
The university system has also argued that the government’s demand that San Jose State “adopt and profess certain highly politicized beliefs or else lose federal funding” is a violation of the First Amendment.
Brooke Slusser, an athlete who had been a plaintiff in the 2024 lawsuit about Ms. Fleming, has criticized San Jose State’s response to the administration as “absolutely absurd” and criticized the university’s president for refusing to apologize.
“The lengths people will go to when they refuse to look in the mirror,” Ms. Slusser wrote on social media after Dr. Teniente-Matson’s open letter about the lawsuit.
Although Harvard University has accrued victories in lawsuits over the government’s tactics against the campus, it is unusual for a university or higher education system to pursue a solo court fight against the Trump administration. When institutions have gone to court, they have most often acted in groups or in conjunction with higher education associations. (The Trump administration on Friday brought a lawsuit against Harvard, accusing it of abetting discrimination against Jewish and Israeli people on campus.)
It is not clear which federal funding streams the government might try to block from San Jose State. The system says that at least two-thirds of San Jose State students receive federal financial aid, totaling about $130 million annually. San Jose State also receives about $175 million in federal research money, much of it through NASA. School officials have warned that there is no ready substitute for federal funding.
Cal State brought its case in Federal District Court in Northern California, which has taken a dim view of the Trump administration’s threats to federal funding to public universities in the state. Last year, Judge Rita F. Lin restored federal grants to the University of California that had been halted by the government and imposed sharp limits on the Trump administration’s pressure campaign.
Judge Eumi K. Lee, another Biden nominee, will hear the Cal State lawsuit. The university system is overseeing the legal response to the Trump administration’s targeting of San Jose State, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss legal issues.
“We are not escalating; we are responding responsibly,” the Cal State system said on its website. “Recent federal enforcement actions have moved quickly to litigation and revocation of federal funding. Filing proactively ensures the matter is heard and decided promptly and allows us to seek court protection if needed. It is a responsible step to protect institutional stability.”
Mildred García, the Cal State system’s chancellor, told trustees at a board meeting this month that she did not intend for the university to retreat from its approach to inclusivity.
“I can never say this enough: We are a welcoming institution, an inclusive institution,” Dr. García said. “Inclusive excellence is perhaps our most fundamental and treasured core value. It is in our D.N.A.”
The next day, Ms. McMahon posted the Education Department’s letter threatening funding cuts.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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