A lawyer for Columbia University said that the university had already been planning to enforce policies for tighter protest rules before the Trump administration demanded them. The university complied with most of the government's requests, including regulating masks on campus and empowering security officers to make arrests. The arguments in court stemmed from a request by the House Committee on Education and Workforce for disciplinary records related to several incidents, and anonymous students and a former student sued to keep the records private. Lawyers for the students argued that the House committee was trying to coerce the university into suppressing speech critical of Israel.