GCU vindicated after winning costly legal battle against government allegations

PHOENIX – Grand Canyon University feels vindicated after spending millions of dollars to successfully defend itself against a series of federal government allegations, the Phoenix private school’s president said Wednesday.

The multifront legal battle, which started during the Biden administration, ended last week after the Federal Trade Commission voted to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest private university of deceptively advertising the cost of its doctoral programs.

“They threw everything that they had at us for five years – everything,” GCU President Brian Mueller told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show. “It cost us $8 million to $10 million in legal fees to defend ourselves. Through that whole process, we never stopped growing.”

GCU president thinks school was targeted for religious reasons

Mueller believes the Christian school, which will have over 130,000 students when the fall semester starts after Labor Day, was targeted for religious reasons.

“It was just a few people in Washington, D.C., that it became very obvious had an ideological problem with the largest private university in the country being a Christian university,” he said.

Mueller wonders if government knew the allegations wouldn’t hold up but had other reasons for taking legal action.

“To some extent, people argue that the process was the punishment,” he said. “They knew they weren’t going to be able to win. They knew they had nothing that was substantial in terms of criticisms of us, but putting us through the process, they were hoping to slow us down.”

GCU president accuses government of ‘witch hunt’

The school weathered investigations from multiple agencies over its nonprofit status and doctoral program disclosures as well as a record $37.7 million Department of Education fine that was later rescinded.

“It was a witch hunt,” Mueller said. “They were going to try to find one thing that they could pin on us and they finally came up with this doctoral thing.”

Mueller said there isn’t a way for GCU to recoup its legal fees or hold the government accountable. He’s ready to move forward, saying demand for what the school has to offer “is unlimited.”

“It never impacted the people that are supportive of ours,” Mueller said. “But it did vindicate us, I suppose, with some people that maybe didn’t know us and were on the fence.”

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