The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jewish people on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The ruling clears a hurdle for the Trump administration as it targets elite schools over accusations of antisemitism. Judge Gerald J. Pappert of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia issued the decision, which largely sided with the government, writing that Penn’s “constitutional claims are easily dispensed with.”
He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the subpoena, though he said that the university would not have to reveal any employee’s connection to a specific Jewish-related organization.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been pursuing an inquiry into potential workplace discrimination against Jewish faculty and staff at Penn, an Ivy League school in Philadelphia, since 2023. While university officials said they welcomed the investigation, they balked last year after the government issued a subpoena seeking names and phone numbers for members of Jewish groups on campus.
The school said much of the information that the government had requested is not collected. Students and faculty groups also condemned the government’s demand for a list of Jews, drawing a parallel to methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
The case has represented a test of how far the government can go to investigate its suspicions about antisemitism in higher education, and Judge Pappert’s decision could shape how aggressively the Trump administration pursues inquiries on other campuses.
The investigation began at the request of Andrea Lucas, a Republican commissioner on the E.E.O.C. who is now its chairwoman. She said the concerns were based on news articles, public statements from university leaders and congressional testimony showing a pattern of antisemitism at the school.
Ms. Lucas filed her complaint in 2023, but the investigation did not ramp up until last year as the Trump administration began a far-reaching pressure campaign to force its policy agenda on the nation’s top colleges.
The E.E.O.C. lawyer leading the investigation, Debra M. Lawrence, who has worked for the agency under seven different presidents, described it as a common request for investigations. The commission was given broad investigatory powers by Congress to enforce prohibitions against workplace discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
During the past year, the E.E.O.C. has played a key role in negotiations between the Trump administration and top universities.
In July, Columbia University agreed to pay $21 million to settle a complaint that Ms. Lucas filed after protests on campus over the war in Gaza. The commission has described the settlement as its largest for an antisemitism allegation.
The Trump administration has repeatedly adopted a hard line toward elite universities, regarding them as hostile to conservative ideology and as hot spots of discrimination. Last year, the government paused $175 million in federal funding to Penn amid a dispute about a transgender swimmer before the sides reached a settlement.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
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