On Sep. 16, 2026, CSPI’s Litigation Department and its co-counsel at the ACLU, Protect Democracy, and Jacobson Lawyers Group sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the US DOGE Service (DOGE), challenging NIH’s ideologically driven censorship and termination of biomedical research grants.

Background

Over the last century, NIH has developed into the global leader in biomedical research, encompassing 27 different Institutes and Centers (ICs) and providing thousands of grant awards on myriad topics to researchers in all 50 states and abroad. NIH’s funding is highly sought-after and competitive, requiring researchers to submit detailed applications that go through rigorous layers of expert scientific review over many months. For decades, terminations of ongoing NIH grants have been exceedingly rare.

That all changed in February 2025, when NIH and HHS issued a series of policies, based on Executive Orders issued by President Trump, aimed at excising research that expresses views the administration disfavors, impacting viewpoints on topics including “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), gender identity, climate change, misinformation and more. Thousands of research grants have been terminated, while many more researchers have seen their applications denied or funding delayed as a result of the administration’s ideological purge.

CSPI’s Litigation Department is no stranger to litigation fighting against NIH’s assault on scientific research integrity. In April 2025, CSPI’s Litigation Department, with co-counsel, sued NIH and HHS, challenging NIH’s then policies and the resulting grant terminations. That case (American Public Health Association v. National Institutes of Health) primarily challenged NIH and HHS’s actions under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and resulted in a June 2025 Order declaring that Defendants’ policies, as well as the resulting grant terminations, were arbitrary and capricious and therefore unlawful under the APA. More details about that litigation and its current status can be found on our NIH Grants Termination case page.
 

The Lawsuit

Unfortunately, the June 2025 Order did not end NIH’s ideological purge of meritorious research. NIH continued to issue updated policy directives that censor researchers’ viewpoints if they were not held by the administration, thus resulting in unconstitutional and unlawful grant terminations. NIH began screening grant documents for keywords like “gender,” “racism,” or “climate change,” to determine whether a grant will be terminated or subjected to an improper renegotiation process.

To address these ongoing harms, we filed suit against NIH, HHS, and DOGE in federal district court in the Northern District of California. The suit, Salles v. National Institutes of Health, was filed on behalf of 17 Plaintiffs, accomplished in their fields and with a proven track-record of receiving NIH grants, seeking to represent two nationwide classes of researchers who have been affected by NIH’s ongoing censorship efforts. Plaintiffs are seeking class-wide relief for all researchers whose work was unjustifiably terminated but whose grants have not yet been reinstated, as well as all researchers currently being impacted by these unlawful, viewpoint-based policies that are likely to lead to additional terminations, forced renegotiations, or application denials.

The case brings claims both under the First Amendment and the APA. Plaintiffs allege that while NIH can make calls about what topics to fund as long as they are consistent with statutes and regulations, the First Amendment also ensures NIH cannot screen out projects or applicants because it thinks they will express views the government does not like. Moreover, Plaintiffs argue that Defendants must follow Congress’s mandates, designed to avoid the politicization of the scientific process, and applicable regulations and law that set the very limited parameters for when grants can be terminated and the requirements for doing so lawfully.

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