Judge orders NIH to restore research grants related to diversity

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore hundreds of scientific research grants terminated by the National Institutes of Health, saying the funding cancellations were illegal and discriminatory, two lawyers in the case said.

The funding cuts targeted research connected to topics such as race and gender identity.

U.S. District Judge William Young, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, expressed alarm and anger at the Trump administration’s conduct, saying that in his four decades as a federal judge he had never seen racial discrimination by the government of this nature.

On Monday, he heard arguments in two cases related to NIH funding cuts brought by a host of plaintiffs including the American Public Health Association, the United Auto Workers Union, individual researchers and more than a dozen Democratic-led states.

“We are really gratified that we have a judge who has taken a fair look at the record and come to the very clear conclusion that NIH and the defendants have acted unlawfully in terminating these grants based on ideological grounds and not based on science,” said Shalini Goel Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, an advocacy group representing the plaintiffs in one of the cases.

By terminating the grants, the Trump administration was effectively declaring that certain groups of Americans are not worthy of having their health studied, Agarwal said. It is part of “a pretty ugly history that the judge is rightly calling out as wrong and fundamentally unlawful.”

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency is exploring its legal options, including moving to stay the judge’s order and launching an appeal.

HHS “stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people,” Nixon said in a statement.

In his ruling from the bench, Young castigated the Trump administration, wondering aloud why no Cabinet secretaries had pushed back against what he termed “appalling” directives to frustrate research into the health of the LBGTQ community and racial minorities.

“You’re bearing down on people of color because of their color,” Young said, according to a lawyer present. “Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

The terminated grants affected projects such as clinical trials and research into mitigating kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease and cervical cancer in diverse populations. The funding cancellations also took aim at research on topics such as climate change and vaccine hesitancy.

Scientists whose research was halted by the cuts said the judge’s order was a moment of vindication.

“It was striking to sit in the courtroom today and have the judge … talk about the blatant discrimination happening around the types of grants that were terminated,” said Brittany Charlton, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “A lot of the harm that we’ve experienced, and more importantly, the communities that we serve, has been acknowledged in front of the whole world.”

Charlton, a lawsuit plaintiff and the founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, had five NIH grants canceled. The termination disrupted a funding stream of roughly $16 million that supported research into reproductive health in the LGBTQ community, and resulted in two of her team members being let go. Charlton is hopeful that the judge’s order means she can restart her projects.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in one of the two cases Young heard Monday argued that the way the Trump administration had canceled the grants was arbitrary, capricious and slapdash, with none of the deliberative analysis required by law.

A separate case that challenged the Trump administration’s move to slash billions from the NIH’s funding of indirect research costs at universities led to a federal judge issuing a permanent injunction blocking the change. The government is appealing the ruling.

An analysis by the American Association of Medical Colleges found that as of this month, the Trump administration had cut nearly $3.8 billion in NIH funding overall, including about half a billion dollars in grants for training and professional development. The terminations are “unprecedented in the history of the agency,” it said.

“There is an impact on every person in the United States when research stops,” said Heather Pierce, the association’s director of science policy and regulatory counsel. “Research that takes place at a particular institution is not done for the benefit of the patient at that institution only. The results of that research change what drugs are available, how different diseases are treated, what we know about what works and doesn’t work.”

Pierce noted that much of the research that was halted investigates the disparate effects of diseases on different racial groups and genders, critical information for “understanding the fundamental basis of disease.”

She worries that the funding cuts are part of a larger “sea change” in the relationship research institutions have had for decades with the federal government, one that has been the foundation of countless scientific breakthroughs. The administration’s actions with the grants and its attempt to cut billions from the NIH’s funding of indirect research costs have undermined the collaborative partnership that has benefited the American public, Pierce said.