The Justice Department sued Harvard University on Friday, accusing the Ivy League school of withholding records sought in a federal investigation into whether Harvard is complying with the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions.
Filed in Massachusetts federal court, the suit alleges that “at every turn, Harvard has thwarted the Department’s efforts to investigate potential discrimination,” claiming the university “has slow-walked the pace of production and refused to provide pertinent documents relating to applicant-level admissions decisions.”
Harvard “made its most recent production of admissions-related documents in May 2025,” the filing states, adding that extended deadlines for document production have passed.
“The Justice Department will not allow universities to flout our nation’s federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide the information required for our review,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Providing requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices. If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it.”
The lawsuit follows the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
The DOJ investigation into Harvard began in April 2025 to assess compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The Justice Department emphasized that the new case is aimed at compelling document production — prosecutors are not outright alleging “any discriminatory conduct,” and the suit does not seek monetary damages or the revocation of federal funding.
The filing also lands amid a wider, escalating fight between the Trump administration and Harvard, including Trump’s recent public mention of seeking up to $1 billion in damages in talks tied to broader disputes.
BREAKING: The U.S. Department of Justice announced a new lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging that the Ivy League institution illegally withheld admissions material needed to decide whether the school is continuing to discriminate in the admissions process despite a 2023… pic.twitter.com/8x7mIZ4nVJ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 13, 2026