What’s New
The National Institutes of Health and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, acted illegally and recklessly in terminating hundreds of research grants, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration argues.
The complaint was filed Wednesday by the American Public Health Association and the United Auto Workers union, which represents thousands of higher-education workers who rely on NIH funding. Several individual researchers also joined the suit, which named as defendants both agencies and their Trump-appointed leaders, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The NIH and HHS enacted an “ideological purge,” the 78-page complaint alleges, to stamp out research on “topics and populations that they disfavor.” The mass cancellations put at least $2.4 billion at stake, including $1.3 billion already spent on projects stopped midstream, according to the complaint.
As a result, “scientific advancement will be delayed, treatments will go undiscovered, human health will be compromised, and lives will be lost,” the complaint says.
The Details
The lawsuit contends that the wave of recent grant cancellations are politically motivated, lack a valid legal or scientific basis, and step outside the bounds of the government’s authority. The complaint cites alleged violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.
The lawsuit details how, in vague directives, the NIH instructed its centers and institutes to review grants for content related to DEI, transgender identity, Covid-19, vaccine hesitancy, climate change, and ties to China or South Africa. The NIH ordered staff to renegotiate the scope, change the language, or otherwise cancel those grants, under the premise that such projects are “unscientific” and “no longer effectuate agency priorities.”
“This is not a proper ground for termination under governing law,” the complaint states. The APHA and UAW are being represented by lawyers from a coalition of nonprofits: the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Protect Democracy, and the national and Massachusetts chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In addition to nixing active grants, the NIH has halted reviews of grant proposals earmarked for candidates from diverse backgrounds and terminated at least 17 existing diversity grants for predoctoral fellowships in the past month, according to the lawsuit.
An HHS document shows the scale of the cuts, with thousands of projects canceled throughout March. Terminations cut across a range of topics that the NIH is statutorily required to study, the complaint says, such as minority health disparities. Research that has nothing to do with DEI — on cancer, Alzheimer’s, HIV, substance-use disorders, stroke prevention, and numerous other subjects — has been caught in the crosshairs.
“These studies, even if they are focused on either gender identity or DEI, will be of value to everyone,” said Lisa Mankofsky, senior director of litigation at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “It really is a terribly devastating blow to this important science.”
The Backdrop
Twenty-three Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. also challenged the Trump administration this week over the termination of more than $11 billion in public-health funding.
The APHA and UAW lawsuit joins a burgeoning resistance to research cuts, which have yielded chaos and uncertainty within the NIH and the hundreds of colleges to which it streamlines funding. Mass layoffs began this week at the NIH and other health agencies. Some proposals linger in limbo, while projects that have been underway for years are paused. The precarity has caused some colleges to freeze hiring and reduce graduate admissions.
Currently paused by a judge is a Trump-proposed 15-percent cap on indirect-research costs through the NIH, which could devastate colleges’ budgets. The administration has also targeted federal funding to individual universities that it says have strayed from its orders on transgender athletes and campus antisemitism.
What to Watch For
Wednesday’s lawsuit seeks to restore grant funding, asking the court to declare the terminations unlawful and unconstitutional, and to prevent the NIH from implementing ideological terminations in the future.
A flurry of lawsuits have been filed as the Trump administration tries to impose its agenda at a rapid pace. So far, Mankofsky said, court challenges have been effective in stymying executive overreaches.
“It may not be perfect,” Mankofsky said. “But to a certain extent, it may be the best that we have right now.”
