NIH Grants Termination
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CSPI’s Litigation Department and its co-counsel at the ACLU and Protect Democracy Project sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), challenging the new policy that led to the abrupt and unlawful cancellation of research grants and the halt of the application process for new grants. Also joining as co-counsel is Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.
Unlawful Termination of the Grants
NIH is the world’s leading funder of biomedical and behavioral research, responsible for the discovery of new ways to diagnose, prevent, and treat the most challenging diseases. NIH makes grant decisions following a highly competitive and rigorous process involving layers of expert scientific review over many months. Consequently, for decades, terminations of ongoing NIH grants have been exceedingly rare.
NIH has been guided by Congressional mandates, regulatory requirements, and scientific expertise when determining what research to prioritize and fund. Under several statutes (such as the Public Health Service Act, Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, and 21st Century Cures Act), Congress has long mandated that NIH do two things: (1) conduct research that promotes health equity and reduces health disparities; and (2) recruit underrepresented groups into the biomedical research field, including racial minorities, women, and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Despite this, beginning in February of 2025, Defendants issued a series of directives to terminate large numbers of grants and refuse to consider certain categories of pending grant applications if they concerned topics that the Trump Administration declared were disfavored, such as grants allegedly related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), gender identity, vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19, and more (“the New Directives”).
The Lawsuit
Plaintiffs include the primary professional association for biomedical researchers (the American Public Health Association (APHA)), an organization dedicated to research in reproductive health (Ibis Reproductive Health), and a union that represents large numbers of researchers (the United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers (UAW)). There are also four individual research scientists Plaintiffs, including Peter Lurie, CSPI’s President and Executive Director, who was a consultant and advisor on a grant terminated under the New Directives. APHA and UAW brought the suit on behalf of their impacted members. On April 2, 2025, the Plaintiffs brought this case because they have been harmed by Defendants’ unlawful New Directives causing grant terminations and midstream abandonment of the processing and advertisement of grant applications.
The New Directives are contrary to HHS’s own internal regulations, which state that NIH can terminate grants in only three limited circumstances: (1) if the grantee “fails to comply with the terms and conditions of the award”; (2) “for cause”; or (3) “with the consent of” the grantee. 75 C.F.R. § 75.372. Because the terminations did not meet these requirements, they were unlawful.
In their Complaint, the Plaintiffs asserted five counts under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (that is, that the New Directives and terminations were arbitrary and capricious, they were not in accordance with the law, they exceeded statutory authority, they were contrary to a constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment, and pursuant to the New Directives, NIH unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed acting on the grant applications that it stopped considering). The Plaintiffs also asserted that the New Directives and terminations were an unconstitutional violation of the Fifth Amendment because they were void for vagueness. Lastly, the Plaintiffs argued that the New Directives and terminations violated the separation of powers because the Executive Branch cannot amend or repeal statutes lawfully passed by Congress.
On April 25, 2025, Plaintiffs filed their Motion for Preliminary Injunction, seeking an order stopping the implementation of the New Directives and restoring the terminated grants and the application process. At a May 22, 2025, hearing on our Motion, Judge Young indicated that instead of ruling on it, he would consolidate the Motion for Preliminary Injunction with an expedited trial/hearing on the merits of the APA claims. He also announced he would treat the Defendants’ Opposition to the Motion for a Preliminary Injunction as a Motion to Dismiss, and he heard argument on that converted Motion at the May 22nd hearing.
On May 30, 2025, Judge Young issued his Order, granting the ”Motion to Dismiss” in part (dismissing without prejudice the two constitutional claims) and denying the Motion in part (overruling the Defendants’ claim that the UAW lacked standing to be a plaintiff in the suit on behalf of its members, researchers who are undergrads, grad students, and faculty).
On June 16, 2025, Judge Young held a hearing on the merits of the APA claims. After taking a recess following two hours of argument, he ruled that the New Directives and terminations of the grants of Plaintiffs (including members of the APHA and UAW) were unlawful and would be set aside as arbitrary and capricious. He commented that the explanations in the Directives and terminations in the administrative record were conclusory and bereft of reasoning in their entirety and that the Defendants had failed to consider the reliance interests of researchers, institutions, and the public in NIH-funded research.
Judge Young also commented that the Directives and terminations represented racial and anti-LGBTQ discrimination, noting that he had not seen government racial discrimination like this in 40 years on the bench.