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The National Institutes of Health has canceled hundreds of grants that explore topics the Trump administration dislikes.
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The United States Supreme Court is allowing the National Institutes of Health to cut nearly $800 million in grants, though it left the door open for the researchers to seek relief elsewhere.
In a 5-to-4 decision issued Thursday, the court paused a Massachusetts district court judge’s June decision to reinstate grants that were terminated because they didn’t align with the NIH’s new ideological priorities. Most of the canceled grants mentioned diversity, equity and inclusion goals; gender identity; COVID; and other topics the Trump administration has banned funding for. The district judge, in ruling against the administration, said he’d “never seen racial discrimination by the government like this.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the district court “likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims,” with which Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh agreed.
“The reason is straightforward,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The core of plaintiffs’ suit alleges that the government unlawfully terminated their grants. That is a breach of contract claim. And under the Tucker Act, such claims must be brought in the Court of Federal Claims, not federal district court.”
The court’s emergency order came after more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general and groups representing university researchers challenged the terminations in federal court.
“We are very disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling that our challenge to the sweeping termination of hundreds of critical biomedical research grants likely belongs in the Court of Federal Claims,” the American Civil Liberties Union, which is part of the legal team that is suing the NIH over the grant terminations, wrote in a statement Thursday evening. “This decision is a significant setback for public health. We are assessing our options but will work diligently to ensure that these unlawfully terminated grants continue to be restored.”
Earlier this month, higher education associations and others urged the court to uphold the district court’s order, arguing that the terminations have “squandered” government resources and halted potentially lifesaving research.
“The magnitude of NIH’s recent actions is unprecedented, and the agency’s abrupt shift from its longstanding commitments to scientific advancement has thrown the research community into disarray,” the groups wrote in an Aug. 1 brief. “This seismic shock to the NIH research landscape has had immediate and devastating effects, and granting a stay here will ensure that the reverberations will be felt for years to come."
Chief Justice John Roberts, who often sides with the conservative justices, joined liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissent.
“By today’s order, an evenly divided Court neuters judicial review of grant terminations by sending plaintiffs on a likely futile, multivenue quest for complete relief,” Jackson wrote. “Neither party to the case suggested this convoluted procedural outcome, and no prior court has held that the law requires it.”
However, Barrett joined Roberts, Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan in agreeing that the district court can review NIH’s reasoning for the terminations, and the justices kept in place a court order blocking the guidance that led to cancellations.
“It is important to note that the Supreme Court declined to stay the District Court’s conclusion that the NIH’s directives were unreasonable and unlawful,” the ACLU said in a statement. “This means that NIH cannot terminate any research studies based on these unlawful directives.”
