A federal judge in Washington temporarily stopped the Department of Education from publishing the names of individual foreign donors and contract counterparties tied to major U.S. universities.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the temporary restraining order Thursday evening, days before an October 2, 2026, release date. The Association of American Universities sued after the Department announced in June 2026 that it would reverse a years-long practice of keeping those names out of public Section 117 reports.
The fight sits at the crossroads of campus money, national security, and administrative law. Section 117 of the Higher Education Act already forces schools to report large foreign gifts and contracts. The dispute is whether the Department can suddenly publish the personal identities it long promised to withhold.
Section 117 requires higher education institutions to file disclosure reports when they are owned or controlled by a foreign source, or when they receive a gift from or enter a contract with a foreign source worth $250,000 or more in a calendar year, alone or combined. Reports are due January 31 or July 31, whichever comes sooner.
Each report must include the aggregate dollar amount of gifts and contracts attributable to a particular country. For a natural person, that country is the country of citizenship or, if unknown, the principal residence. For a legal entity, it is the country of incorporation or, if unknown, the principal place of business.
Restricted or conditional gifts trigger extra detail. Schools must disclose the amount, the date, and a description of conditions or restrictions, including rules on faculty jobs, new departments or research programs, student selection, or aid limited by country, religion, sex, ethnic origin, or political opinion.
The statute also states that all disclosure reports “shall be public records open to inspection and copying during business hours.” That public-inspection rule is the legal backdrop for the Department’s June 2026 turn.
Chutkan’s order recounts a clear timeline. Since 2020, the Department collected the names of individual foreign donors while stating it would not publish them. For six years, across two information collection requests, the Department told institutions in writing that donor names and addresses would not appear in the public disclosure report.
The Association alleges that institutions and donors relied on those assurances when making and accepting donations. In June 2026, the Department reversed course and announced it would publish the names. After first publishing the names of 92 institutional donors, it set October 2, 2026, as the date to publish the names of all donors.
The court order, also described in Reason’s coverage of the ruling, frames that shift as the core administrative-law problem.
Chutkan held that the Association showed a likelihood of success on its claim that the June 2026 Publication Decision was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. She did not reach the remaining claims at this stage.
She explained the governing standard in plain terms. When an agency changes position, it must display awareness that it is changing position and give good reasons for the new policy. Where the prior policy created serious reliance interests, the agency must account for them.
"For six years, across two information collection requests, Defendants told institutions, in writing, that it would not include donor names and addresses in the public disclosure report. Plaintiff alleges that institutions and donors relied on those assurances in making and accepting donations."
The court found the Department’s explanation thin. The only attempt at justification, Chutkan wrote, was an asserted statutory mandate to disclose. Officials stated without elaboration that “the statutory inspection requirement outweighs countervailing confidentiality interests.”
She also called the explanation internally inconsistent. The Department treated publication as statutorily required, yet treated the withholding of addresses as a discretionary “policy matter.” On the present record, she concluded, the Association was likely to show that the Department “entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.”
Chutkan left a door open. “The Department may ultimately be able to justify its decision,” she wrote. The temporary order addresses the record as it stood before the planned October dump of names.
The court next found likely irreparable harm. Disclosure of confidential information, including personally identifying information, can qualify as irreparable harm because the information loses its confidential nature once released.
"Here, Defendants threaten to imminently publish the names of donors who have hitherto remained anonymous for every internet user to see in posterity. Once published, the information will likely never escape the public eye. Indeed, the disclosure may produce downstream harms to the safety of donors who live in politically repressive countries...."
On equities and the public interest, Chutkan weighed irreversible loss of privacy against the Department’s claimed need to move now. She wrote that defendants had not identified any serious harm from a temporary pause.
During the hearing, defendants’ counsel conceded that the only prejudice would be delay in executing a purported statutory command. The court noted that officials had already withheld publication of these names since July. It was unclear, she wrote, what harm would follow from a few more weeks of delay.
The operative language is broad and specific. Defendants and their officers, agents, employees, and all persons acting in concert with them are enjoined from publishing, disclosing, or otherwise making publicly available the names or any other identifying information of foreign donors and contract counterparties reported by AAU member institutions under Section 117 that has not previously been publicly disclosed.
They are also barred from taking any other action to effectuate the Department’s recent decision to publish that information. Names already made public, including the 92 institutional donors, sit outside that shield. Fresh identifying details do not.
Jenner and Block LLP represents the Association. Counsel listed on the matter include Ishan Kharshedji Bhabha, Amanda Shafer Berman, Anjali Motgi, Elizabeth Henthorne, Lindsay C. Harrison, and Kara V. Brandeisky.
The Department’s June 2026 statement staked out a different frame. Officials acknowledged that non-U.S. persons retain certain constitutional rights within U.S. borders and that colleges may have interests in not disclosing associations with foreign donors. Those interests, the Department said, are not absolute and must be weighed against compelling public interests.
"In this case, the public interest at stake, the ability to examine substantial foreign financial ties with domestic institutions of higher education, including research institutions involved in the taxpayer-funded development of critical and emerging technologies, is substantial and directly affects U.S. national security considerations."
The Department argued that public access to the identities of qualifying foreign counterparties is essential to transparency and helps protect U.S. national interests. It called collection and public release of that “limited foreign counterparty information” within its Section 117 authority, and said publication is not only statutorily required but also in the best interests of U.S. national security.
Officials also rejected a First Amendment shield for concealment. They wrote that the constitutional right of association does not extend to “counterstatutory concealment of foreign counterparty identities,” even while the Department continues to withhold additional personal information such as addresses.
The statement distinguished Supreme Court cases on nonprofit donor disclosure, including Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (2021) and First Choice Women’s Res. Ctrs., Inc. v. Davenport (2026). Those disputes, the Department said, did not involve national security. Section 117, it argued, often involves foreign relationships with direct security impact.
In that vein, the Department pointed to foreign entities of concern linked to Russia, China, and Iran. It said some institutions have repeatedly disregarded U.S. government warnings about funding from entities on government lists that call for heightened diligence. Those entities, the Department claimed, continue to give gifts and enter contracts with domestic institutions, placing U.S.-funded critical research at significant risk.
Because no other agency is statutorily compelled to collect comparable information, the Department concluded that national security benefits of public inspection outweigh the associational and limited privacy interests of foreign nationals and their domestic counterparts.
Chutkan’s order is temporary relief, not a final judgment on the merits. The court rested likelihood of success on the Administrative Procedure Act claim and expressly declined to decide the other theories at this stage. Investigators and litigants still must test whether the Department can build a fuller record that shows awareness of the policy change, offers real reasons, and grapples with reliance interests built over six years of written promises.
Authorities have not publicly resolved, in this record, how address withholding as a “policy matter” squares with a claimed pure statutory command to publish names. No public final ruling has determined whether national security rationales about Russia-, China-, and Iran-linked funding can cure the APA defects the court flagged. The October 2, 2026, mass publication date is stopped for AAU-reported names and identifying information not already disclosed.
The statute’s public-inspection mandate for disclosure reports remains on the books. So does the $250,000 reporting threshold, the country-attribution rules, and the extra detail required for restricted gifts. The immediate legal question is narrower: whether an agency that spent years collecting names under a no-publish pledge can flip to full identity release without doing the administrative work the APA demands.
Foreign money on campus is not a paperwork quarrel. It is a test of whether the government can chase real security risks without shortcutting the rules that keep agency power inside the law.
