Knight Institute v. Department of Education

Summary

On November 4, 2024, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed Knight Institute v. Department of Education, No. 24‑cv‑08393 (S.D.N.Y.), seeking to compel the immediate release of all guidance—both public and private—that the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has provided to colleges and universities regarding their Title VI obligations amid the wave of campus protests sparked by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The Institute alleges that it “exhausted all administrative remedies” after submitting its FOIA request on July 31, 2024, yet the Department “stonewalled” the request by missing FOIA’s 20‑business‑day deadline, refusing to expedite processing, and declining to grant a fee waiver despite the likely thousands‑of‑page scope of responsive materials. In its complaint the Institute seeks: (1) all documents related to OCR decisions on potential or actual Title VI investigations into alleged discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnicity since October 7, 2023; (2) all communications between OCR and any institution requesting Title VI guidance or clarification, along with the Department’s responses; and (3) all public and private OCR guidance on how institutions should handle student protests under Title VI. Since October 7, 2023, OCR opened over 90 Title VI investigations into claims of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campuses—a sharp uptick from previous years—but has made only a handful of related documents publicly available, fueling concerns about opacity in federal oversight of campus speech. The Knight Institute contends that these records are of “substantial public interest,” as they are critical to understanding why and how universities responded to the protests and what the Education Department views as colleges’ ongoing obligations, and it asks the court to compel the immediate release of all requested information.