{"id":5374,"date":"2026-09-13T21:59:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=5374"},"modified":"2026-09-13T21:59:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:59:55","slug":"the-four-page-amnesty-united-states-v-harvard-and-the-invention-of-title-vis-ongoing-violation-requirement-mark-goldfeder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/the-four-page-amnesty-united-states-v-harvard-and-the-invention-of-title-vis-ongoing-violation-requirement-mark-goldfeder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Four-Page Amnesty: United States v. Harvard and the Invention of Title VI\u2019s Ongoing-Violation Requirement \u2013 Mark Goldfeder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On August 13, 2026, the District of Massachusetts needed only four pages to dismiss the United States\u2019 Title VI enforcement action against Harvard University, and in those four pages it held that a university may violate Title VI for two academic years, keep every federal dollar it received, and defeat the United States by outwardly behaving itself once the government\u2019s letter arrives. The order is short, and the brevity is not accidental: the reasoning cannot survive a longer look at the statute, the precedent, or the district court\u2019s own prior findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The order is particularly astounding because the author of those prior findings is the author of the order. In August 2024, in Kestenbaum v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Judge Richard Stearns reviewed the same campus and refused to dismiss a private Title VI suit brought by Jewish students. He called Harvard\u2019s response to their harassment \u201cat best, indecisive, vacillating, and at times internally contradictory,\u201d warned that crediting the university\u2019s public statements would \u201creward Harvard for virtuous public declarations that for the most part . . . proved hollow when it came to taking disciplinary measures against offending students and faculty,\u201d and concluded that \u201cthe facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students.\u201d Two years later, those facts barely rate a footnote, which declines to \u201cfurther rehearse\u201d the 2023\u201324 allegations because prior opinions, including his own, had already fleshed them out. What matters now, the court says, is the calendar: the government alleged only three later incidents, all in March 2025, and none after June 30, 2025, when the agency formally advised Harvard of its failure to comply. Those incidents were \u201ctoo isolated and episodic\u201d to show continuing institutional noncompliance, and without an ongoing violation there was no case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the problem in a nutshell: The ongoing-violation requirement on which the dismissal rests appears nowhere in the text of 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 2000d-1; the order\u2019s treatment of the government\u2019s claim to recover funds already disbursed contradicts forty years of Supreme Court precedent treating such recovery as the collection of a debt; footnote three of the order conducts merits review of agency action on the pleadings, against the party entitled to every inference; and the inference at the center of the opinion, that quiet on campus is evidence of a cured campus, inverts the burden the Supreme Court\u2019s voluntary-cessation cases assign and contradicts a public record showing that the quiet was produced by concealment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that, in four pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, as this Essay will explain, there are still a few enforcement paths that remain open for the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to continue reading the full piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 13, 2026, the District of Massachusetts needed only four pages to dismiss the United States\u2019 Title VI enforcement action against Harvard University, and in those four pages it held that a university may violate Title VI for two academic years, keep every federal dollar it received, and defeat the United States by outwardly behaving itself once the government\u2019s letter arrives. The order is short, and the brevity is not accidental: the reasoning cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-1oG","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5375,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374\/revisions\/5375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}