Lawyers for the Department of Justice on Wednesday cited the government shutdown in its request for an extension of all pending deadlines in Harvard University’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s freezing of more than $2 billion in federal funding, court filings show.
Because funding of the department ceased “at the end of the day on Sept. 30,” DOJ attorneys said they needed more time to file a status report. They asked for an extension “until Congress has restored appropriations to the Department,” according to an eight-paragraph motion filed in federal court in Boston.
“Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal Defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances,” the motion said.
The first government shutdown in seven years began at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
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On Tuesday night, nearly all the Democrats in the Senate voted against a short-term funding bill to keep the government open, triggering the shutdown. Earlier, the majority-holding Republicans had rejected a Democratic counterproposal that would have extended expiring health care insurance subsidies and rolled back GOP cuts to Medicaid and other programs.
The Fellows of Harvard College and the university’s president do not oppose DOJ’s request for a stay, but the Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors does, court filings said.
Harvard filed the lawsuit last spring alleging the Trump administration unlawfully froze more than $2 billion in federal funding to the school after it refused to give the government control over academic decisions.
In April, US District Judge Allison Burroughs agreed to a request from both sides to expedite the case.
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In Wednesday’s court filing, DOJ’s lawyers said, “although we greatly regret any disruption caused to the Court and the other litigants, the Government hereby moves for a stay of the deadline to file a status report in this case until Department of Justice attorneys are permitted to resume their usual civil litigation functions.”
The Trump administration said it froze Harvard’s grants — much of them for medical and scientific research — because the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment.
Harvard alleges the action came without notice or explanation. It also argues the administration’s goal is to exert improper influence over the school as part of a sweeping crackdown on elite universities to squelch ideological dissent, a violation of schools’ First Amendment rights.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.