Judge Orders NIH to Restore Canceled Grants

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday ordered the National Institutes of Health to restore hundreds of research grants the Trump administration terminated earlier this year, STAT News reported. 

It’s the latest development in two lawsuits researchers, their trade organizations and a coalition of Democratic attorneys general filed against the NIH, which has terminated nearly $2 billion in research grants to colleges and universities since President Donald Trump took office in January. Many of the grants the agency terminated focused on addressing health disparities among racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community and women. The Trump administration has said its decision to cancel them aligned with its broader efforts to root out diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “gender ideology.”

“Today’s decision is a crucial step in protecting public health and safeguarding critical research that helps us understand, prevent, and treat life-threatening diseases,” plaintiff Brittany Charlton, associate professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement after the hearing. “Scientific research must be guided by evidence, not political agendas, and this ruling rightly restores important research projects that should never have been disrupted.” 

During Monday’s hearing, U.S District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, said the NIH violated federal law when it bypassed congressional approval to terminate the grants. Although the plaintiffs’ arguments centered on procedural violations, Young said at the hearing that he’d “never seen racial discrimination by the government like this” during his four decades as a federal judge, and he criticized the government for providing no formal definition of DEI despite using it to justify the grant terminations. At an earlier hearing for the cases, he asked the NIH’s lawyers if the agency’s policy was now “homogeneity, inequity and exclusion,” according to STAT.

The order to restore the grants only applies to those named in the lawsuits, and the government can appeal the decision.