Attorneys for Cal State University administrators, the California Faculty Association and other unions told a judge Friday that they have settled a legal dispute over whether professors should be given notice before their personal information is turned over to the federal government.
Attorneys for the parties informed Judge Stephen I. Goorvitch of the accord, which came on a day in which the judge was scheduled to hear the unions’ request for a preliminary injunction requiring that such notice be provided. No terms were divulged. Goorvitch scheduled a post-settlement status conference for Feb. 13.
The dispute began when CFA attorneys filed court papers on Nov. 3 alleging that since January 2025 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights have been actively engaged in a campaign by the Trump administration to control the content of research, scholarship, teaching and activism at American colleges and universities.
“Given the current federal administration’s defiance of the norms and laws that normally constrain its authority, petitioners cannot rely on federal agencies to appropriately limit the scope of their investigations or maintain sensitive personal information in confidence,” the CFA court papers stated.
But in their own court papers, lawyers for CSU administrators said the notice sought by the unions is not required under either the stated or federal constitutions.
“(The unions) have no likelihood of success in obtaining such unprecedented relief and the balance of hardships overwhelmingly favors CSU due to the extraordinary risk to the institution if it cannot respond lawfully and appropriately to federal government investigations,” CSU administrators’ attorneys’ contend in their pleadings.
Nothing in the unions’ proposed order would give administrators the right or discretion to comply with a subpoena that it believes is lawful and appropriate and an employee who wants to hinder an investigation could use the order in bad faith, the CSU administrators’ attorney further contend in their pleadings.
The requested injunction would violate the supremacy clause of the federal constitution and the stated constitution also does not provide such notice protections, according to the CSU administrators’ court papers.
The CFA represents about 1,500 CSU faculty at Cal State Los Angeles and some 25,000 members systemwide. One of the other union plaintiffs, the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America Local 4123, is the exclusive bargaining representative for some 10,000 CSU academic student employees.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint against Cal State Los Angeles in January involving antisemitism allegations. Last Aug. 11, the administration notified employees that it had provided the EEOC with “publicly available university contact information” for all employees, according to the CFA attorneys’ court papers.
The school later disclosed student employees’ personal contact information, demographic data and employment information to the EEOC by late September, the CFA lawyers further stated.
The CFA and UAW have expended significant resources responding to union members’ concerns that their personal information will be used to surveil them, that they will be targeted for employment consequences based on their activism, online speech and scholarship and that union members who are not U.S. citizens may face unjust immigration enforcement, the CFA attorneys contend in their pleadings.
“The federal government’s threats are serious,” according to the CFA attorneys’ court papers, which note that on Sept. 30 a federal judge held that the Trump administration illegally targeted pro-Palestinian student activists with deportation threats to silence their speech critical of Israel.