A federal judge in Boston on Monday said the termination of National Institutes of Health grants for research on diversity-related topics by President Donald Trump’s administration was “void and illegal,” and accused the federal government of discriminating against racial minorities and LGBT people.
U.S. District Judge William Young during a non-jury trial said the NIH violated federal law by arbitrarily canceling greater than $1 billion in research grants due to their perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Young said he was reinstating grants that had been awarded to organizations and Democratic-led states that sued over the terminations. And the judge indicated that because the case proceeds he could issue a more sweeping decision.
“This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” said Young, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan. “Any discrimination by our government is so mistaken that it requires the court to enjoin it and at an appropriate time, I will do it.”
Referring to the termination of grants for research related to issues involving racial minorities, the judge said he had in 4 a long time on the bench “never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable.”
“You’re bearing down on people of color due to their color,” the judge said, referring to Trump’s administration. “The Structure won’t permit that.”
Representatives of the NIH and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
Rachel Meeropol of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the grant recipients who sued, said Young’s ruling applies to tons of of grants. The plaintiffs include the American Public Health Association, a membership organization for public health researchers, and 16 states led by Massachusetts.
The NIH, the world’s leading funder of biomedical and behavioral research, has terminated 2,100 research grants totaling about $9.5 billion and a further $2.6 billion in contracts since Trump took office in January, in response to a letter that dozens of NIH employees signed onto last week protesting the cuts.
The funding cuts are a part of Trump’s wide-ranging actions to reshape the federal government, slash federal spending and end government support for DEI programs and transgender healthcare. The administration’s plans to chop 10,000 jobs at health agencies including NIH have been temporarily blocked by one other federal judge.
Trump also has signed a series of executive orders requiring agencies to make sure grant funds don’t promote “gender ideology” and to finish support of what it sees as “discriminatory” DEI programs. Conservative critics of DEI programs have portrayed them as discriminatory against white people and certain others.
In keeping with Trump’s policy agenda, the NIH has instructed staff to terminate grant funding for studies related to DEI programs, transgender issues, COVID-19 and ways to curb vaccine hesitancy, and grants that might potentially profit Chinese universities.
The trial that Young held on Monday concerned only a few of the claims within the consolidated lawsuits over the cuts. The judge will consider others later.
Young said he would give the parties a chance to present further evidence before he rules on those claims and decides whether to reinstate grants beyond those awarded to the plaintiffs.
The NIH grant terminations, in addition to a slowdown in approving and renewing grants, have reverberated through universities across the nation, lots of which have faced losing the overwhelming majority of their research budgets.
In response, universities implemented hiring freezes, travel restrictions, class size reductions, furloughs and layoffs.
Many colleges rely on NIH grants for nearly all of their research budgets. The University of Washington, a top public university for biomedical research, for instance, said it had received about 1,220 grants from NIH and about $648 million in funding last fiscal yr, in response to court filings.
Students and college on the university said the disruption to grant funding has touched off a brain drain from the U.S., as researchers are increasingly leaving for positions abroad. The slowdown have also endangered long-running studies, including a program to bank and study Alzheimer’s patients’ brains.
The Trump administration has tried to chop other key sources of research funding.
In February, Angel Kelley, a U.S. district judge, blocked a rule that may have vastly limited how much the federal government paid out for the indirect costs of research like equipment, maintenance, utilities and support staff. The administration had estimated that the move would cut about $4 billion in funding to research centers.Â
