Teachers union sues Trump administration over $400M cuts to Columbia University

President Donald Trump's administration is facing a new lawsuit that argues that the administration's threat to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from Columbia University is illegal.

The American Federation of Teachers filed the lawsuit alongside the American Association of University Professors on Tuesday, arguing that the Trump administration is seeking to "consolidate power over higher education."

"This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students," the lawsuit reads. 

"The Trump administration is coercing Columbia University to do its bidding and regulate speech and expression on campus by holding hostage billions of dollars in congressionally authorized federal funding—funding that is responsible for positioning the American university system as a global leader in scientific, medical, and technological research and is crucial to ensuring it remains so," it continues.

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Anti-Israel agitators staged encampments on Columbia University's campus. (Getty Images)

The lawsuit comes after Columbia's administrators agreed to enact sweeping changes to its policies regarding student protests and conduct a review of its Middle Eastern studies department.

The Trump administration threatened to withhold some $400 million if changes were not made.

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President Donald Trump's administration threatened funding cuts for Columbia University if it didn't reform protest policies. (Fox News / Special Report)

The Ivy League school agreed to ban masks for the purpose of concealing identity, empower 36 campus police officers with new powers to arrest students and appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies, as well as the Center for Palestine Studies. 

Sources familiar with the negotiations told Fox News that meeting the demands doesn't mean that Columbia will get their $400 million in funding back, but that it's just a precondition to opening talks.

Maria McIver, executive director of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), spoke at an "emergency vigil" outside Columbia University's gates to protest recent policy changes on Monday. (FOX)

Tuesday's lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, calls on the court to require the Trump administration to reinstate "all grants and contracts to Columbia University."

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It also urges the court to prohibit the Trump administration from making further funding cuts, as well as award damages to the plaintiffs.

Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.