A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration cannot use the threat to cut federal research funding to force the University of California system to comply with its bias and antisemitism reform demands.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, a Biden-appointee to the Northern District of California, granted a preliminary injunction Friday in a 76-page ruling that prohibits the feds from demanding large payments to resolve civil rights investigations.

Lin cited the administration’s probe into the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, as the Department of Justice has proposed a $1 billion fine over alleged rampant antisemitism and bias at the school: “UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting up Defendants’ pressure campaign.”

The Los Angeles Times reported the preliminary injunction for now renders moot “nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.”

Lin, in her ruling, also noted how faculty “describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke,’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by [the Trump administration]. … These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.”

Judge Lin said that the Trump administration is “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge” left-leaning viewpoints from college and universities, and that “the undisputed record” shows officials have “engaged in coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the First Amendment and the 10th Amendment,” The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit was filed in September by the American Association of University Professors.

“This marks a huge win for the broad coalition of faculty, staff, students, and labor unions that brought the lawsuit seeking to defend their First Amendment rights and to restore critical research funding,” the association said in a statement.

“Friday’s decision orders a stop to the Trump administration’s illegal weaponization of civil rights laws and federal funding to restrict free speech on UC campuses,” the group added. “During the hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, the court noted the overwhelming evidence plaintiffs provided, which included numerous declarations from UC faculty and staff describing how the administration’s actions have chilled their rights of speech and association.”

According to the New York Times, Lin “cited specific conditions that could run afoul of her order, including requiring the university to ‘restrict its curriculum, scholarship or research based on the defendants’ preferred viewpoints.’ She also said the government could not connect funding to a requirement for the university to ‘screen international students based on ‘anti-Western’ or ‘anti-American’ views and/or ‘socialize’ international students to favored ‘norms.’”

In recent months, Brown University struck a $50 million deal with the Trump administration, as did Columbia University, which agreed to pay $200 million, to settle anti-discrimination investigations into the schools. Last week, Cornell University also settled, agreeing to pay $30 million to resolve the probe into the institution.

It remains to be seen how this ruling will influence ongoing negotiations between the administration and other universities facing similar probes.

“The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC system from proceeding with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year,” it reported.