Republicans want Columbia’s federal funding stopped. There are at least 3 big problems.

Republicans looking to punish colleges for not cracking down hard enough on antisemitism want to cut off their federal funding — a lever of power Washington has not used in decades.

GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, are demanding Education Secretary Miguel Cardona exercise powers under an anti-discrimination law to yank Columbia University’s federal cash. It’s a call echoing Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has prodded several colleges since the outbreak of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war and urged Columbia President Minouche Shafik to resign.

"This president, Shafik, has [been] shown to be a very weak and inept leader,” Johnson said on The Hugh Hewitt Show Wednesday, adding later that “we need to revoke federal funding to these universities if they cannot keep control.”

While yanking taxpayer money from any college might look clear and decisive on paper, it’s a move so rife with potential unintended consequences and legal hurdles that the Trump administration never followed through on its own threats against school funding. Even when there’s presidential buy-in — and the Biden administration hasn’t suggested it would support pulling money — it threatens financial aid for students.

All schools that receive federal funds must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin, and unraveling it isn’t straightforward.

Here are three key barriers to stripping federal funds for Columbia — or any other institution:

Education Department investigations

Being stripped of federal funding, including access to federal student aid, is one of the gravest consequences an institution can face. It first requires an investigation from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which can take months, if not years, to conclude.

And the bar for being found guilty of a civil rights violation is high. While the agency's probes were used to help dismantle segregation in K-12 schools in the 1960s — and thousands of complaints still get filed every year — it's been rare for a college or school to lose its funding in recent decades. Instead, most come into compliance and settle. One of the few combative cases against a college was in the 1980s, when the Education Department withheld scholarship money from a private Christian college in Pennsylvania during a sex discrimination case.

OCR must find that Columbia failed to properly respond to antisemitism, and then Columbia must follow steps set out in the investigation’s resolution or risk being penalized.

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in 2020 threatened Connecticut’s high school sports authority and a half-dozen local school boards with legal action or a loss of funding after concluding that its transgender athlete policy violated federal sexual discrimination laws. DeVos moved on enforcement and referred the case to the Justice Department, though it was later withdrawn under the Biden administration. None of the schools nor the sports authority lost their funding.

Former President Donald Trump also threatened K-12 schools, demanding they reopen for in-person instruction during the pandemic or risk losing their federal funding, but his Education Department never moved forward.

Cardona’s agency launched an investigation into Columbia in November in its first batch of probes of colleges with alleged incidents of antisemitism or Islamophobia. Dozens of investigations have been opened into K-12 schools and universities across the country.

The secretary, in an interview on CNN in November, said “if an institution refuses to follow the law to protect students, we would withhold dollars.” But he also signaled at the time that it was unlikely his agency would need to follow through.

On Tuesday, Cardona weighed in for the first time on campus unrest, saying on X, formerly Twitter, that he is “deeply concerned by what is happening at Columbia University” and added that he could not weigh in on pending investigations.

An Education Department spokesperson did not respond by deadline to a question on whether the secretary would seek to pull Columbia’s federal aid.

Defining antisemitism under civil rights law

It is unclear under federal law what it means to violate Title VI when it comes to antisemitism, which makes it harder for the Education Department to penalize an institution for its actions or inaction to stop campus antisemitism. College leaders have been struggling to navigate the line between free speech during anti-Israel protests and crack down on hate against Jewish students.

The Biden administration has been criticized for its pace for finishing the rulemaking that would codify what constitutes antisemitism at a school, college or university. Jewish advocacy groups and GOP lawmakers have pressed the administration to finish its rule, which has been delayed three times.

The Education Department’s rule on antisemitism and ancestry-based discrimination, which hasn’t been proposed yet, has been moved to a long-term action but has a self-imposed timeline of December 2024.

Biden hasn't indicated he's willing to cancel federal funds

While Republicans can demand to have Columbia cut off from federal funds, they need support from the administration to move forward.

On Monday, Joe Biden weighed in on the campus protests for the first time.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests,”he said. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

He has not said anything, however, about pulling funds from the university or even if the university president should resign, which Republicans have also demanded.

When asked whether Shafik should step down, Biden said he would “have to find out more about that.”

The White House is “closely” monitoring the campus protests unfolding at college campuses, spokesperson Andrew Bates told reporters on Tuesday.

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous, and they have no place on any college campus or anywhere in the United States of America,” Bates said.

Johnson on Wednesday slammed the White House and Democrats for not providing “strong leadership” against the protests on campus and defending the protesters.

“It’s really become a serious problem,” he said. “And they are allowing mob rule to overtake the American ideals of free speech and the free exchange of ideas and the free exercise of religion. It’s just not who we are.”