--- title: "In a Boston Courtroom, the Government Argues There Is No First Amendment Right to Money" description: "Harvard’s fight over $2.2bn in frozen federal grants reaches the appellate bench, with the Supreme Court waiting above" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-05T21:08:04.994Z modified: 2026-10-06T06:20:15Z url: https://rews.cc/a/in-a-boston-courtroom-the-government-argues-there-is-no-firs-127472 language: en tags: ["harvard", "trump", "funding", "law", "supreme-court", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # In a Boston Courtroom, the Government Argues There Is No First Amendment Right to Money *Harvard’s fight over $2.2bn in frozen federal grants reaches the appellate bench, with the Supreme Court waiting above* By Jan Sokol · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/in-a-boston-courtroom-the-government-argues-there-is-no-firs-127472 ## In brief - A federal appeals court in Boston heard arguments over the freeze of more than $2.2bn in Harvard research grants - DOJ counsel Michael Velchik argued the case belonged in the Court of Federal Claims and that “there is no First Amendment right to money” - Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled in April 2025 that the freeze violated the First Amendment and due process; the administration appealed in December - Harvard’s Paul Clement and the AAUP’s Elizabeth Prelogar, both former solicitors general, called the cuts retaliation - Judges Lynch, Gelpi and Dunlap heard the case; a related appeal on international student enrollment follows on Tuesday Outside the federal courthouse in Boston on Monday, before the hearing began, the ritual assembled itself as it has for a year and a half: a sea of white hats with crimson emblems, a banner, a microphone, a speaker. Crimson Courage, a Harvard alumni group, had convened professors, students and graduates in what the Boston Globe describes as a routine battle cry. Then everyone went inside, to a courtroom at the end of the hall on the seventh floor, where the fate of more than $2.2 billion in research money was argued before three judges. On the sidewalk, Walter Willett, a professor at the school of public health, said funding cuts had halted a 50-year nurses’ health study. Karl Molden, a Harvard senior from Austria, spoke of international students living in anxiety, “not knowing if our visas were still valid.” Kirsten Weld, a history professor and co-president of Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the administration’s threats and the university’s response together had produced a campus-wide “chilling effect on our speech, on our writing, and on our teaching.” ## A Monetary Dispute, the Government Says Inside, Michael Velchik, senior counsel for the Department of Justice — a Harvard alumnus himself, and once, the Globe notes, the author of a paper written from the perspective of Hitler while at Harvard — presented a defense rooted in jurisdiction. Little was said about antisemitism, the stated cause of it all. Instead Velchik argued that US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs should never have heard the case at all, that it belonged in the Court of Federal Claims. And he dismissed the idea that funding could be entangled with expression. > When you look specifically at the grant terminations, there is no First Amendment right to money “At a certain point we get to decide what’s good enough for us when we decide who gets this money,” Velchik told the panel. It was Burroughs who, in April 2025, ruled that the Trump administration had unlawfully frozen more than $2.2 billion in federal grants to the school, doing so under the guise of holding Harvard accountable for its response to antisemitism on campus. In her opinion she wrote that the connection between science funding and the experience of Jewish students was unclear, and that the administration had violated the First Amendment and due process by canceling the research grants wholesale after Harvard rejected its demands. The administration appealed in December. It has challenged a series of district court rulings in Harvard’s favor, from international student enrollment to antisemitism on campus; on Tuesday, the same court will hear the appeal of a judge’s decision blocking the administration from barring international students from enrolling at Harvard. ## The University’s Answer Harvard’s counsel repeated what has become the university’s refrain: that the cuts are part of a larger, concerted retaliation campaign. Paul Clement, also a Harvard alumnus and the university’s outside counsel, argued the freezes violated the First Amendment and were punishment for refusing a stringent settlement the administration had proposed. “The administration essentially said, ‘Where are the various places that touch Harvard, and let’s cut them off’,” Clement said. The legal firepower in the room was of the kind that gathers only when a case is expected to travel far. Both Clement and Elizabeth Prelogar — who argued a parallel case about the funding cuts on behalf of the American Association of University Professors — have served as solicitor general of the United States. Dozens of Harvard Law students sat in the first rows of the gallery, camping out for the morning; for them, the arguments doubled as a live case study between classes, and several gushed about the power on display. The three judges — Sandra L. Lynch, Gustavo A. Gelpi, and Joshua D. Dunlap, a recent Trump appointee — peppered both lawyers with questions about precedent, pressing each on how earlier cases should be applied and posing hypotheticals about the First Amendment and the procedural steps for addressing civil rights discrimination concerns, the category under which the antisemitism allegations fall. They are, as the Globe puts it, the last line of defense before the case could proceed to the Supreme Court. The wealthiest university in the world is, on paper, a strange underdog. Yet the government’s position, stripped of its legalese, is one any ministry anywhere would recognise: the money is ours, and we decide who deserves it. The question the seventh floor must answer is older than the republic itself — whether a ruler may use the treasury to punish a subject for saying no. Harvard has [counted the cost of such arithmetic before](https://rews.cc/a/counting-the-money-that-never-came-177-billion-in-federal-gr-c40a1a), and the courts have [ruled against this administration’s speech fights](https://rews.cc/a/two-courts-in-eight-hours-tell-trump-the-first-amendment-sti-9778af) more than once. The judges have not yet said when they will rule.