Supreme Court clears way for canceling NIH grants tied to diversity, gender

Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with the cancellation of National Institutes of Health research grants tied to issues like gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a 5-4 decision, in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided in part with the majority, and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the minority, the high court lifted a lower court order that required the NIH to restore hundreds of research grants that had been canceled because they were tied to these issues. But the legal challenge over the from 16 states and a coalition of research groups will continue to play out in the lower court.

The court's divided decision enables the administration to pull back awards that it says do not align with its policy objectives. Since returning to the White House for a second term, President Trump has directed federal agencies to cancel DEI-related grants or contracts and ensure federal funds do not go toward initiatives involving gender identity.

The dispute before the Supreme Court arose after the Department of Health and Human Services and the head of NIH issued a series of directives in February that led to the cancellation of grant awards that were connected to DEI or gender identity, as well as research topics including vaccine hesitancy, COVID and climate change.

The states and research groups challenged the grant terminations in April, arguing the move violated the Constitution and a federal law governing the agency rulemaking process. The plaintiffs sought to block NIH from ending grants and to have funding that had already been axed restored.

A federal judge in Massachusetts held a bench trial and ruled in June that the grant terminations were unlawful. Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, ordered that the directives from the Trump administration and resulting grant terminations be set aside.

Justice Barrett wrote Thursday that the District Court lacked the jurisdiction to order the grants to be restored. The majority ruling said that "challenges to the grant terminations...belong in the Court of Federal Claims." That court hears money claims related to the Constitution, "federal statutes, executive regulations, or contracts, express or implied in fact, with the United States."

But she sided with the minority on another question about the legality of the agency guidance and indicated that the plaintiffs, to "obtain complete relief," might have to pursue it in two separate courts.

"[M]y preliminary judgment is that the plaintiffs' challenges to the grant terminations belong in the [Court of Federal Claims], and their [Administrative Procedure Act] challenges to the guidance belong in district court," Barrett wrote.

Roberts said in his dissent argued that the relief granted by the lower court "falls well within the scope of the District Court's jurisdiction," and "if the District Court had jurisdiction to vacate the directives, it also had jurisdiction to vacate the 'Resulting Grant Terminations.'"

NIH has a $47 billion budget and is considered the world's largest funder of biomedical research. As a result of the NIH and HHS directives, more than 1,700 grants were canceled nationwide, including more than 800 awarded to public universities, state instrumentalities and local governments in16 states that challenged the move. Lawyers for the Democratic state attorneys general told the Supreme Court in a filing that the sudden cancellation of the grants forced their universities to lay off or furlough employees, cut student enrollment and withdraw admissions offers.

In the U.S. District Court, Judge Young found that NIH engaged in "no reasoned decision-making" in rolling out the grant terminations, and wrote there was "not a shred of evidence" to back up the administration's claims that DEI studies are used to support discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit to pause the district court's decision, which it declined to do.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the high court for emergency relief last month. In his emergency appeal, the solicitor general argued that the Supreme Court had a chance to "stop errant district courts from continuing to disregard" its decisions.

Sauer pointed to an April order from the justices that cleared the way for the Department of Education to halt millions of dollars in teacher-training grants that it said funded programs that involve DEI initiatives. The high court said in that case that the Trump administration was likely to succeed in showing that the federal district court that oversaw the dispute lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under federal law.

The solicitor general said the judicial system does not rest on a "lower-court free-for-all where individual district judges feel free to elevate their own policy judgments over those of the Executive Branch, and their own legal judgments over those of this Court."

But the public health groups warned that even a brief stay of the district court's decision reinstating the grants would invalidate crucial multiyear projects that have already been paid for by Congress, "inflicting incalculable losses in public health and human life because of delays in bringing the fruits of plaintiffs' research to Americans who desperately await clinical advancements."

They warned that pulling the grants would do irreversible harm to public health, halting biomedical research that Congress directed NIH to fund.

"That, and the obvious harm to those who suffer from chronic or life-threatening diseases and their loved ones, must be balanced against NIH's ill-defined monetary interests and any asserted incursion on its policymaking latitude," the research organizations wrote in a filing.