Lawsuit over Trump rejecting medical research grants is settled

The case concerning the canceled subsidies evolved relatively quickly. In June, a district court judge said the federal policy “represented racial discrimination” and issued a preliminary order that would have allowed all canceled grants to be reinstated. In his written opinion, Judge William Young noted that the government issued its directives blocking support for DEI without even bothering to define what DEI is, thus making the entire policy arbitrary and capricious, and therefore in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. He rescinded the policy and ordered funding reinstated.

His decision ultimately ended up before the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling in which a fragmented majority agreed on a single issue: Judge Young’s district court was the wrong place to resolve questions of government-provided money. So the return of the canceled grant money would have to be handled in a separate case filed in another court.

However, what is critical is that the other part of the decision remained intact. Young’s determination that anti-DEI, anti-climate, anti-etc. positions the policy was illegal and therefore void was upheld.

Restoration of reviews

This has far-reaching implications for the second part of the original lawsuit, involving grants that were not yet funded and blocked by Trump administration policy. With this policy rescinded, there was no justification for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not considering the grants when they were submitted. But in the meantime, deadlines had expired, funds had been spent, and in some cases the people who had submitted the grants had left the “new investigator” category for which they were applying.

The proposed regulations essentially set the record straight on all of this; blocked grants will be evaluated for funding as if it were still early 2025. “Defendants stipulate and agree that the end of the 2025 federal fiscal year does not preclude Defendants from considering and/or granting any of the requests,” it states. Although the Notice of Funding Opportunity has since been withdrawn, grant applications will be sent for peer review.