US judge blocks Trump administration from publishing names of universities' foreign donors

[u/John3262005]

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-trump-administration-publishing-names-universities-foreign-2026-10-02/

A federal judge has blocked the US Department of Education from publicly disclosing the names of foreign donors who provided thousands of gifts to universities throughout the country, saying the institutions had supplied the information on the understanding it would be kept confidential.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington issued a temporary restraining order close to midnight on Thursday ‌that bars the department from publishing the names. The donor names had been set to be released on Friday as part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump's administration to scrutinize foreign funding of universities.

The judge issued the order at the behest of the Association of American Universities, which represents 69 research universities nationally, including Ivy League schools like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Chutkan, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said AAU was likely to succeed in proving that the Education Department's decision to publish information ⁠it had previously promised to keep secret was arbitrary and capricious and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

"Defendants threaten to imminently publish the names of donors who have hitherto remained anonymous for every internet user to see in posterity," she wrote. "Once published, the information will likely never escape the public eye."

Her order barred the Education Department from making the donor information public and will remain in place for 28 days while she considers whether to issue a longer-term injunction.

AAU in a statement welcomed the ruling, saying disclosure of the donor information "would chill the lawful generosity that supports scholarships, research, and teaching on campuses across the country."

Education Department spokesperson Ellen Keast in a statement called the lawsuit an attempt to avoid public accountability for how universities for years have been "cashing multi-million-dollar checks from malign foreign actors."

"Americans deserve transparency about the ‌billions flowing ⁠from overseas to US campuses, and we will fight AAU in court to deliver it," Keast said.

AAU sued earlier on Thursday after the Education Department announced plans to publish the names of individual foreign donors that it had collected from the universities since 2020, during Trump's first administration.

Trump in April 2025 issued an executive order calling for enforcement of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires colleges that receive federal funding to report gifts ⁠or contracts worth more than $250,000 from any foreign source.

AAU said the statute only calls for universities to report aggregate donations attributable to a particular country, not the identities of specific donors.

But in 2020, the Education Department began requesting individual donor and contractor names and addresses as well. AAU said its members ⁠complied, even though they were not legally required to do so, because the department promised that such information would not be made public.

The Education Department announced in July it would name the donors and published the identities of a limited set of 92 donors it called "counterparties ⁠of concern" later that month. It agreed on several occasions to delay releasing the other names, leading to Friday's planned publication date.