A federal judge on Monday halted the National Institutes of Health’s overhead-funding cap after 22 states sued the agency, arguing in their complaint that “work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt” because of the move. That pause, though, applies only in the suing states.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, came on the heels of a Friday-night memo announcing that the NIH would limit indirect-cost funding to 15 percent, approximately half of the average rate it previously offered. The states were seeking an injunction on the policy, which was to take effect Monday.
Judge Angel Kelley granted the states a temporary restraining order on Monday afternoon, hours after the lawsuit was filed. A hearing is scheduled for February 21.
Legal challenges were widely anticipated given the sweep of the cuts, which have sparked pushback across higher education and are likely to leave significant holes in universities’ budgets. The states’ case, though, is premised on a public-health argument. Cutting research funding, they argue, will harm citizens, “who are the beneficiaries of research creating treatments, such as modern gene editing, vaccines such as flu vaccines, and cures for diseases like cancer, infectious diseases, and addiction.”
The attorneys general — all Democrats — of Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin have joined the suit. The cap, they say, is “arbitrary and capricious” and “contravenes Congress’s express directives in the appropriation acts governing the NIH,” as well as regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. Along with the NIH and HHS, the states’ attorneys general in their filing name the agencies’ acting leaders, Matthew Memoli and Dorothy Fink, as defendants.
The 59-page filing details how the cuts are expected to affect public institutions of higher education in each state. For example, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School receives about $62 million in overhead funding from the NIH per year, according to the lawsuit, and the cap would reduce that figure by between $40 and $50 million.
The University of California system has thrown its support behind the suit. “As the world’s leading public research institution, we depend on NIH funds to perform our vital mission. A cut this size is nothing short of catastrophic for countless Americans who depend on UC’s scientific advances to save lives and improve health care,” Michael V. Drake, the system’s president, said in a statement. “This is not only an attack on science, but on America’s health writ large. We must stand up against this harmful, misguided action.”
The lawsuit cites more than $2 billion in NIH contract and grant funding that went to the UC system during fiscal year 2023 (along with $158 million to the California State University system). It also touts the UC system’s contributions to biomedical advancements, including “the first radiation treatment for cancer, research contributing to the first flu vaccine, the discovery of the role of LDL and HDL cholesterol in heart disease, the invention of modern gene editing, and much more.”
Filing a second suit on Monday, in the same Massachusetts District Court, was a coalition of medical organizations led by the Association of American Medical Colleges. That association’s members, the lawsuit asserts, are “intending to take immediate actions to respond to this sudden change,” including imposing an immediate hiring freeze in their research operations. Ultimately, the groups argue, the cap could mean “fewer clinical trials, less fundamental discovery research, and slower progress in delivering lifesaving advances to the patients and families that do not have time for delay.”
In a third lawsuit, the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities joined a dozen institutions in contesting what they termed “a disaster for science” and “an affront to the separation of powers.” The institutions participating are Brandeis University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, George Washington University, the Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester, the Regents of the University of California, and the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and of Tufts College.
In a separate legal proceeding, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to lift a blanket spending freeze on federal grant programs, including those at the NIH. John J. McConnell Jr., a federal judge in Rhode Island District Court, wrote that “the broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”
