Tag: Court

  • Kent State professor’s ‘Twitter tirade’ — not bias — caused opportunities to be revoked, court finds

    Kent State professor’s ‘Twitter tirade’ — not bias — caused opportunities to be revoked, court finds

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    Kent State University did not discriminate or retaliate when it decided to deny a transgender professor a previously offered course-load reallocation and a transfer to work on the main campus, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Sept. 12, upholding a district court’s decision.

    In 2021, the professor had reached out and been in talks with the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences about leading a forthcoming Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. The dean had also proposed reallocating some of the professor’s teaching load so they could work on developing a new gender studies major. Additionally, the professor had asked for a transfer to the main campus from the regional campus where they had been working. 

    When the reallocation offer was revoked and two committees voted against the transfer request, the professor filed a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, along with other charges.

    The district and appeals courts, however, found that the professor had engaged in a “weeks-long, profanity-laden Twitter tirade” against their colleagues after learning a political science professor and head of the school where the center would be housed would be chairing committees overseeing the center and the gender studies major. 

    After witnessing several weeks of tweets calling the leadership transphobic, critiquing the “white cishet admin with zero content expertise,” referring to the field of political science as a “sentient trash heap,” and more, the College of Arts and Sciences dean revoked the offer to reallocate the professor’s teaching load so they could lead on developing the major, but still welcomed them to be on the committee.

    The social media messages “violated university policy against attacking colleagues or their academic fields,” and thus were “reasonable grounds … for disciplining or reprimanding an employee,” the court said. 

    Additionally, the transfer committees discussed the professor’s “withdrawal from university service, negative interactions with other faculty members, and the department’s needs,” the 6th Circuit said. “No one discussed [the professor’s] gender identity.”

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  • Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s $2.2 Billion Harvard Funding Freeze

    Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s $2.2 Billion Harvard Funding Freeze

    A federal judge delivered a sweeping victory for academic freedom Wednesday, ruling that the Trump administration’s freeze of $2.2 billion in federal grant funds to Harvard University was illegal and unconstitutional.

    U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs determined that the administration imposed the funding freeze in retaliation for Harvard’s refusal to comply with demands that would have violated First Amendment protections, including ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and screening international students for ideological biases.

    The ruling vacates all freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars Trump administration officials from enforcing those orders going forward.

    The administration froze Harvard’s federal grants on April 14, just hours after the university rejected a list of ten demands. While only one demand related to antisemitism concerns, six others targeted ideological and pedagogical issues, including restrictions on who could lead, teach, and be admitted to the university, as well as what could be taught.

    Judge Burroughs noted that the “swift termination” of funding occurred before the administration had learned anything substantive about antisemitism on campus or Harvard’s response efforts, suggesting the antisemitism concerns were “at best arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual.”

    The funding freeze halted work on critical research projects spanning multiple fields, including studies on tuberculosis, NASA astronauts’ radiation exposure, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and a predictive model to help Veterans Administration emergency room physicians assess suicidal veterans. Burroughs ruled that none of these affected projects had any connection to antisemitism.

    The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) celebrated the ruling as a landmark victory for higher education.

    “This is a huge win for all of American higher education, for science, and for free and critical thought in this country,” said Dr. Todd Wolfson, National AAUP President. “Time and again, Trump has tried to restrict speech and cripple lifesaving university research. As today’s victory shows, Trump’s war on higher education is unconstitutional.”

    Veena Dubal, National AAUP General Counsel, characterized the administration’s actions as “cynical and lawless, leveraging claims of discrimination to bludgeon critical research and debate.”

    The Harvard AAUP chapter also praised the outcome. “This historic ruling underscores the importance of free inquiry, truth, and the rule of law in a democratic society,” said Kirsten Weld, AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter President.

    Harvard President Dr. Alan Garber had previously stated that “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

    The Education Department pushed back against the ruling through spokesperson Madi Biedermann, who criticized Burroughs as “the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices” before the Supreme Court ultimately overturned those practices.

    “Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it,” Biedermann said, suggesting the administration may continue its broader efforts to reshape higher education policies.

    The ruling establishes important precedent for protecting academic freedom and research independence from political interference. Legal experts note that the decision reinforces constitutional limits on government retaliation against educational institutions for their speech, curriculum choices, and admissions policies.

    AAUP leaders said that the victory demonstrates the importance of collective action in defending academic freedom, with faculty and administrators standing together against what they characterize as authoritarian overreach into university governance and research priorities.

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  • ‘Wrong and deeply disappointing’: Supreme Court halts order restoring NIH grants

    ‘Wrong and deeply disappointing’: Supreme Court halts order restoring NIH grants

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    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a blow to universities and other research institutions seeking to restore grants cut in mass by the National Institutes of Health.
    • Researchers, unions and associations sued NIH this spring after the agency abruptly terminated millions of dollars in grants for projects that dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion.
    • In a 5-4 decision, conservative justices on the Supreme Court paused a June order that would have restored $783 million in funding, ruling that the district court lacked jurisdiction to handle the grant restoration. However, the court declined to block the lower court’s order that deemed NIH’s guidance that led to the cuts illegal.

    Dive Insight:

    With the Supreme Court decision, those who have seen grant funding cut by NIH could face a longer, more complicated path through another federal court to have their awards restored.

    In their April complaint, plaintiffs accused NIH of “launching a reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor.”

    They tallied 678 terminated projects resulting in $1.3 billion already spent by the government on projects “stopped midstream” being wasted, and another $1.1 billion that had yet to be spent.

    When U.S. District Judge William Young ruled against NIH in June, he blasted the agency for what he saw as discrimination, both racial and against LGBTQ+ communities, in its purge of research funding. 

    “Have we no shame,” said Young, a Reagan appointee, according to a report from The Associated Press. 

    Earlier this month, the watchdog agency U.S. Government Accountability Office also determined that NIH acted illegally in its DEI cuts. 

    The Supreme Court did not block Young’s ruling that NIH’s guidance that led to the agency cutting DEI research funding was illegal. That ruling is still being litigated in appellate court.

    Instead, the ruling majority determined that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims — which hears monetary claims against the federal government — is the venue for handling terminated grants. 

    Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who has been active in fighting the Trump administration’s various moves to cut federal research funding, blasted the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday. 

    “The Supreme Court’s decision is wrong and deeply disappointing,” Campbell said in a statement. “Even though the Court did not dispute that the Trump Administration’s decision to cut critical medical and public health research is illegal, they ordered the recipients of that funding — hospitals, researchers, and the state — to jump through more hoops to get it back.”

    The Supreme Court’s split decision brought internal dissent as well. In a minority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court’s liberal justices, wrote that “if the District Court had jurisdiction to vacate the directives, it also had jurisdiction to vacate the ‘Resulting Grant Terminations.’”

    In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson rebuked the majority’s opinion. 

    “By today’s order, an evenly divided Court neuters judicial review of grant terminations by sending plaintiffs on a likely futile, multivenue quest for complete relief,” she wrote, adding that the court “lobs this grenade” without considering Congress’ intent or the “profound” consequences of the ruling. 

    “Stated simply: With potentially life-saving scientific advancements on the line, the Court turns a nearly century-old statute aimed at remedying unreasoned agency decisionmaking into a gauntlet rather than a refuge,” Jackson said in the dissent.

    Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify the nature of the Supreme Court decision.

     

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  • Court Temporarily Blocks Ban on Bargaining by Defense Department Teachers Unions – The 74

    Court Temporarily Blocks Ban on Bargaining by Defense Department Teachers Unions – The 74


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    A district court judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration ban on collective bargaining by two teachers unions in Department of Defense schools.

    Judge Paul Friedman issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed this spring by the Federal Education Association and Antilles Consolidated Education Association, which represent more than 5,500 teachers, librarians and counselors in the 161 schools under the Department of Defense Education Activity. The agency educates 67,000 children on military bases worldwide.

    The union sued the Trump administration over a March executive order that stripped collective bargaining rights from two-thirds of federal service workers. The order impacted the Departments of Justice, Defense, Veteran Affairs, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.

    The Federal Education Association has been negotiating teachers contracts with the Department of Defense since 1970, while the Antilles Consolidated Education Association has bargained on behalf of Puerto Rico educators since 1976, according to the lawsuit. The current collective bargaining agreements for both unions were approved in 2023 and are set to expire in summer 2028.

    But since the order was issued, the lawsuit says, the Department of Defense Education Activity has discontinued negotiations, stopped participation in grievance proceedings and prohibited union representation during educator disciplinary meetings. Members are also no longer allowed to conduct union work during the school day. Requests from educators to access a union sick leave bank with 13,000 donated hours have also been ignored, according to the suit.

    “These actions, taken together, essentially terminate the respective collective bargaining agreements and thus cause irreparable harm,” Friedman said in his decision.

    A 1978 federal statute allows collective bargaining in the civil service sector. The suit argued that while presidents have the authority to exclude an agency if its primary function involves intelligence, investigation or national security work, “Many, if not most, of the agencies and agency subdivisions swept up in the executive order’s dragnet do little to no national security work, much less do they have a primary function [of] intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative [work].”

    The agency declined to comment on ongoing legal proceedings. In a reply to the unions’ lawsuit, Trump administration attorneys said the executive order was within the law and that reversing it would be costly.

    “Rather than maintaining the status quo, it would force [the Department of Defense] to undo actions it has already taken to implement the executive order, causing significant disruption and resource expenditures,” the lawyers wrote.

    In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized a few exemptions for agencies related to the Air Force and Army, but not the teachers unions — despite a push from 45 lawmakers to exclude the school system.

    “Ensuring that DoDEA educators and personnel retain collective bargaining protections will ensure that DoDEA can continue to recruit and retain the best staff in support of its mission,” the congressional members wrote in a letter. “Collective bargaining safeguards the public interest, and its history in DoDEA has demonstrated better outcomes for mission readiness, and stronger connections between military-connected families and those who serve them.”

    An appeal from the Trump administration is pending. A similar lawsuit from six unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, resulted in an injunction, but a federal appeals court reversed it in August.


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  • Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance struck down in federal court

    Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance struck down in federal court

    A federal judge on Thursday struck down the U.S. Department of Education’s guidance that threatened to strip colleges and K-12 schools of their federal funding over diversity, equity and inclusion practices it deemed unlawful. 

    U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher’s final judgment in the case comes after she and another federal judge temporarily blocked the guidance while litigation proceeded. 

    Her ruling vacates the Education Department’s Feb. 14 guidance. It also strikes down a Trump administration directive that ordered K-12 school districts to certify they’re not using DEI practices or risk losing federal funding. However, the Trump administration had already withdrawn the requirement due to a prior court ruling. 

    The Education Department, Gallagher wrote Thursday, didn’t take the proper steps to issue the new guidance. She also ruled that the guidance violated constitutional rights by placing viewpoint-based restrictions on classroom speech and using vague language that didn’t make clear what kind of DEI initiatives were prohibited. 

    The ruling deals a blow to one of the Trump administration’s many efforts to stamp out DEI practices in colleges and elsewhere. 

    The Feb. 14 guidance letter immediately sparked outcry from educator groups, who argued that it would limit what they could teach in the classroom, including instruction on history or systemic racism. They also argued it would prohibit campus resources, such as college cultural centers. 

    Shortly after its release, the guidance and related actions from the Education Department sparked at least three separate lawsuits. Gallagher’s ruling is in response to the complaint brought by the American Federation of Teachers, the union’s Maryland affiliate, the American Sociological Association and an Oregon school district. 

    Those groups hailed the ruling Thursday. 

    “Today’s ruling makes it clear that, regardless of President Trump’s wishes and endless attacks, our public education system will continue to meet the diverse needs of every student — from teaching true history to providing critical resources,” AFT-Maryland President Kenya Campbell said in a statement. 

    The required steps for new policies

    The sweeping Feb. 14 guidance interpreted the U.S. Supreme Court case striking down race-conscious admissions to extend to every aspect of education, arguing that colleges and K-12 schools were prohibited from considering race in any of their policies. The letter said that ban extended to scholarships, housing and graduation ceremonies. 

    The letter also took aim at classroom instruction and DEI practices. 

    “Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in the letter. “Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them — particularly during the last four years — under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”

    The Trump administration has maintained that the Feb. 14 guidance merely restates colleges and K-12 schools’ existing obligations under Title VI, which bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. However, Gallagher pushed back on that argument, writing that the guidance created new policies for colleges and schools to follow. 

    Title VI — along with the landmark court decision striking down race-conscious admissions — have “never been interpreted to preclude teaching about concepts relating to race,” Gallagher wrote. 

    The Trump administration could have issued guidance to note that it would prioritize Title VI enforcement to “discrimination against all groups, even those in the majority,” Gallagher added. “But it went much farther than that by expanding the definitions of ‘stereotyping,’ ‘stigmatizing,’ and ‘discrimination’ to reach entirely new categories of conduct.” 

    Moreover, the Education Department cited the Feb. 14 letter the following month when it launched investigations into more than 50 colleges over allegations that their programs or scholarships have race-based restrictions. Most of the institutions were targeted because of their relationship with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that for years provided support for underrepresented groups earning doctoral degrees in business but recently adopted a broader mission.

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  • Wide-ranging coalition of ‘friends of the court’ continue to support citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal in her return to the Supreme Court

    Wide-ranging coalition of ‘friends of the court’ continue to support citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal in her return to the Supreme Court

    The government can’t jail a journalist for asking a question. And when it does, it can’t get away with it scot-free. But that’s what happened to the police and prosecutors who arrested citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal when she asked an officer questions in the course of reporting the news. 

    It was unconstitutional enough that these Laredo, Texas, officials arrested Priscilla for routine journalism — something freedom-loving Americans know the First Amendment protects. Even worse, they did so because she criticized them. And to further their plan to arrest Priscilla, they deployed a Texas penal statute aimed at curbing abuses of office —and one that Laredo officials had never before tried to enforce in its 23-year history. 

    After the Fifth Circuit denied Priscilla relief for her constitutional injury, the Supreme Court granted her petition and tossed out the Fifth Circuit’s decision. The Court ordered the Fifth Circuit to reconsider her case in light of an earlier ruling. But after the Fifth Circuit mostly reinstated its previous ruling, Priscilla and FIRE once again asked the Supreme Court to intervene. 

    Supporting Priscilla in front of the high court is an impressive and diverse coalition of media organizations, journalists, and defenders of civil liberties. These 11 amicus curiae briefs urge the Supreme Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in order to protect Americans’ First Amendment right to investigate and report the news and to ensure that officials can be held accountable when they infringe on that obvious right. 

    These reporters and media organizations wrote about how this important First Amendment case will impact the rights of all journalists:

    • The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 24 news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Dow Jones & Company (owner of The Wall Street Journal) demonstrate how history shows that “no technique has been more routine or central to newsgathering — from the Founding through the present day — than pursuing information about government affairs simply by asking for it.” In addition to attorneys from the Reporters Committee, the media coalition is also represented by Jackson Walker LLP.
    • The MuckRock Foundation, an organization that drives public records requests across the country, is a nonprofit that assists the public in filing governmental requests for public records and then publishes the returned information on its website for public access. Journalists routinely use records MuckRock publishes to expose government corruption, misuse of government funds, and other matters of public concern. MuckRock’s brief warns that if upheld, “the Fifth Circuit’s decision will encourage other government officials, both high and petty, to harass, threaten, and arrest people for requesting information that the government would prefer not to release — even if the government may lawfully release the information under state law.” MuckRock is represented by Prince Lobel Tye LLP.
    • A group of five current and former journalists — David Barstow, Kathleen McElroy, Walter Robinson, John Schwartz, and Jacob Sullum — emphasizes that no reasonable official would have thought Priscilla’s basic reporting practice was criminal. They also use real-life examples to demonstrate that “journalists cannot do their jobs if they must fear that any interaction with the government — even a simple request for truthful, factual information — may be used as a pretext for an arrest and criminal prosecution.” The journalists are represented by counsel at Covington & Burling LLP.
    • The Dallas Free Press submitted a brief with Avi Adelman and Steven Monacelli, two independent journalists who, like Priscilla, have been arrested or detained while reporting on law enforcement. The brief details how when faced with “closed doors and empty mailboxes … journalists must develop alternative sources to perform their job — a public service indispensable to our democracy.” And if communicating with these sources could result in arrest, independent journalists “are especially vulnerable … given that they may lack the resources and institutional backing of a larger news outlet in the event that they are prosecuted.” The Dallas Free Press, Adelman, and Monacelli are represented by the SMU Dedman School of Law First Amendment Clinic, Thomas Leatherbury, and Vinson & Elkins LLP.

    This impressive group of organizations across the ideological spectrum wrote to emphasize the problems with applying qualified immunity in cases like Priscilla’s:

    • First Liberty Institute explains that “the government arresting a journalist for asking questions so obviously violates the First Amendment that no reasonable official would sanction such an action.” And FLI points out that “it comes as no surprise that there is no case directly on point with the facts here” because “these sorts of outrageous fact patterns are more frequently found in law school exams than in real life.” FLI is represented by Dentons Bingham Greenbaum LLP.
    • The Americans for Prosperity Foundation articulates that qualified immunity is inappropriate when it shields government officials from liability for “intentional and slow-moving” infringements of First Amendment rights. Moreover, AFPF argues, qualified immunity especially threatens constitutional rights when officials enforce rarely-used statues, because “the more obscure the state law, the less likely it is that a prior case was decided on a similar set of facts.”
    • The Law Enforcement Action Partnership — whose members include police, prosecutors, and other law-enforcement officials — stress that the Supreme Court “has consistently held that qualified immunity does not shield obvious violations of bedrock constitutional guarantees.” The brief observes that “the dramatic expansion of criminal codes across the country has made it easier than ever” for law enforcement to pretextually arrest someone as punishment for exercising their First Amendment rights. LEAP is represented by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
    • Young America’s Foundation and the Manhattan Institute highlight that “the First Amendment’s guarantees limit state law, not the other way around.” Their brief also explains how the Fifth Circuit’s failure to recognize decades of Supreme Court precedent protecting “routine news-gathering activities under the First Amendment … erodes essential free-speech and free-press rights.” YAF and the Manhattan Institute are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and The Dhillon Law Group.
    • The Institute for Justice urges reversal of the Fifth Circuit’s decision because “it undermines the text and original meaning of Section 1983,” which protects constitutional rights when violated “under color of” state laws and “notwithstanding” state laws that purport to limit those rights. IJ also stresses that the Fifth Circuit’s application of qualified immunity in the context of an obvious constitutional violation “is inconsistent with the prudential rationale underlying qualified immunity: the carefully calibrated balancing of government and individual interests.”  
    • The Constitutional Accountability Center details the history of Section 1983 and cautions that because “qualified immunity is at odds with Section 1983’s text and history, courts should be especially careful to respect the limits on the doctrine.” CAC points out that this is an especially inapt case for qualified immunity because Section 1983 was adopted precisely to combat things like the criminalization of speech by pre-war slave codes and retaliatory prosecutions against critics of slavery.
    • The Cato Institute underlines that in the context of qualified immunity, “clearly established law is an objective inquiry of reasonableness, not a blind reliance on a lack of judicial precedent.” Cato also warns that “freedom of the press cannot meaningfully exist if journalists are not allowed to seek information from government officials.”

    Priscilla and FIRE are exceedingly grateful for the support of this diverse and formidable amicus coalition. With this support, she is hopeful the Supreme Court will hold that journalists — and all Americans — can seek information from government officials without risking arrest. 

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  • District Court Judge Continues to Demand OCR Reinstate Staff

    District Court Judge Continues to Demand OCR Reinstate Staff

    The Office for Civil Rights handles complaints concerning discrimination in federally funded education institutions.

    Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

    A federal district court judge refused the Trump administration’s request to vacate a previous ruling that prohibited the Department of Education from laying off nearly half its Office for Civil Rights staff.

    The decision was made by Massachusetts judge Myong Joun on Wednesday and involved the case Victim Rights Law Center v. Department of Education. It comes just a month after the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction in a similar case, New York v. McMahon, which Joun also oversaw. 

    In the new order, the district court judge argues that the cases, and therefore their related rulings, are separate. 

    The New York case, which was filed by multiple state attorneys general, addressed the reduction in force more broadly, Joun said. By comparison, the Victim Rights Law Center case more specifically addresses the RIF at OCR and how it may hold the office back from completing its statutory mandate of protecting students from discrimination.

    So, although the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue with the reduction in force broadly, Joun argues, it does not mean the enjoinment of layoffs within OCR is no longer applicable.

    Trump officials “present two arguments for why vacatur or a stay are appropriate: first, that the Supreme Court granted the stay in a related case, and second, that the two related cases are ‘indistinguishable in all pertinent respects.’ I am unconvinced by either argument,” Joun wrote. “Although this case and New York are related, I issued a separate Preliminary Injunction Order to address the unique harms that Plaintiffs alleged arose from their reliance on the OCR.”

    He also noted that even though the high court judges reversed one preliminary injunction, that does not mean they have made a final ruling on the merit of the RIF.

    Finally, Joun went on to say that the defendants’ motion for stay has little standing, as “they have not substantially complied with the preliminary injunction order” in the first place. Reporting from The 74 backs this up, showing that none of the 276 fired OCR employees have been reinstated.

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  • Higher ed groups ask Supreme Court to preserve lower court order to restore NIH grants

    Higher ed groups ask Supreme Court to preserve lower court order to restore NIH grants

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The American Council on Education and other major higher education associations are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve a lower court’s ruling that ordered the National Institutes of Health to reinstate funding for hundreds of canceled grants. 
    • In June, a federal judge vacated NIH directives to nix grant funding for research related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The Trump administration quickly appealed the decision and asked the Supreme Court in July to pause the lower court’s order while an appeals court considers the case. 
    • Eight higher ed groups — including ACE, the Association of American Universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges — argued in legal filings Friday that allowing NIH to cancel the grants again would destabilize the nation’s biomedical research and waste government funding on projects forced to stop midstream. 

    Dive Insight: 

    President Donald Trump signed several executive orders shortly after beginning his second term that prompted the NIH cancellations. One ordered federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” and another directed them to end federal funding for “gender ideology,” which the administration defined as the idea that gender exists on a spectrum. 

    Civil rights groups have noted that anti-LGBT groups use the term “gender ideology” to cast being transgender as a political movement rather than a fundamental identity. And the American Medical Association has said that “trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.”

    The Trump administration canceled vast sums of scientific research funding following those orders. In NIH’s case, the agency often informed researchers of the terminations by saying their work “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

    The moves quickly drew legal challenges. 

    Researchers and unions argued in an April lawsuit that the move was “a reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor.” A coalition of states also filed a lawsuit that month challenging the terminations. 

    U.S. District Judge William Young agreed with their arguments, ordering NIH in June to restore the plaintiff’s canceled grants. According to a Monday press release from ACE, the order impacted roughly 1,200 grants — though that is only a fraction of the awards that the agency has terminated.

    Since the order only covered the plaintiffs’ grants, ACE and other higher ed groups have also asked NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, in a July 29 letter, to reinstate the other awards canceled under the anti-DEI directives —  “in the spirit of fairness and consistency.” 

    The Trump administration has appealed Young’s decision. So far, federal officials have asked both Young and the appellate court to block the order to reinstate the grants while the appeals process plays out. Both rejected that request. 

    Then last month, the Trump administration took it to the Supreme Court. 

    The higher education groups noted in their legal filings that grant applications undergo rigorous scientific review before NIH accepts them. 

    “In recent months, however, the Executive Branch has jettisoned NIH’s scientific decisionmaking via agencywide directives that mandated the termination en masse of NIH grants deemed related to disfavored political topics,” their Friday filing argued. 

    If those terminations are allowed to stand during the appeals process, critical medical research into diseases like Alzheimer’s and diabetes will be ground to a halt, they said. The groups noted some researchers have had to abandon projects halfway through and lay off staff and students with knowledge of the work. 

    The Trump administration, meanwhile, has argued to the Supreme Court that Young didn’t have jurisdiction to order NIH to reinstate the grants, arguing instead that the matter should proceed in the Court of Federal Claims. In its emergency request, it pointed to the Supreme Court’s April ruling that allowed the U.S. Department of Education to maintain a freeze on $65 million in canceled grant funding for teacher training. 

    In that ruling, the court’s unsigned majority opinion said the government likely wouldn’t be able to recover the funding once disbursed and added that the grant recipients would not “suffer irreparable harm” if a lower court’s order to reinstate the grants was put on hold during the appeals process. 

    The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to make a similar ruling in the NIH case.

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  • Lawsuit Over NIH Grant Funding Heads to Supreme Court

    Lawsuit Over NIH Grant Funding Heads to Supreme Court

    The NIH has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding that it says is used to conduct illegal DEI and gender identity-related research.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Adam Bartosik and Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock/Getty Images

    The Trump administration has taken its fight over grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health to the Supreme Court, requesting permission Thursday to finalize millions of dollars in award cuts, CBS News reported.

    President Trump began slashing research funding shortly after he took office in January, targeting projects that allegedly defied his executive orders against issues such as gender identity and DEI. By early April, 16 states and multiple academic associations and advocacy groups had sued, arguing the funding cuts were an unjustified executive overreach and bypassed statutory procedures.

    Since then, a federal district court ordered a preliminary injunction requiring all grants to be reinstated, and a court of appeals denied the Trump administration’s request to halt the decision. Now, executive branch legal officials are taking the case to the highest court.

    In an emergency appeal, Solicitor General John Sauer wrote that the NIH is attempting to “stop errant district courts from continuing to disregard” presidential orders.

    The solicitor also pointed to an April ruling from the Supreme Court allowing the Department of Education to terminate some of its own grants for similar reasons. In that case, the justices said the Trump administration would likely be able to prove that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to mandate the payment of a federal award.

    The court system does not allow 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,” Sauer wrote.

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  • Project POTUS 2025 Middle School Winners Announced

    Project POTUS 2025 Middle School Winners Announced

    Indianapolis, IN — Project POTUS, a national middle school history initiative from the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, has named winners for this year’s competition. 

    Since the founding of our nation, there have been nearly half a billion American citizens. Of those, over 12,000 of us have served in Congress. Just 115 have become Supreme Court Justices. Only 45 citizens have become President of the United States. There’s something exceptional about each POTUS — good, bad, or otherwise. Project POTUS? challenges students in middle school to research an American president and create a video, 60 seconds or less, representing the POTUS chosen in a way that is creative, supported by good history research, and fun. A Citizen Jury made up of nearly 100 people reviewed all qualifying submissions and selected this year’s winners.

    Grand Jury’s Grand Prize and Spotlight Award Selections  

    Grand Prize Winner ($500 award) 

    • 6th grader Peter Gestwicki from Muncie, Indiana won grand prize for his video about Theodore Roosevelt. Watch his winning video  here.

    Spotlight Award  Winners ($400 award winners) 

    • 8th grader Grace Whitworth from St. Richard’s Episcopal School in Indianapolis, Indiana won for her video about President Thomas Jefferson. Watch her winning video  here.
    • 8th grader Izzy Abraham from Sycamore School in Indianapolis, Indiana for her video about President Calvin Coolidge. Watch his winning video  here.
    • 8th grader Clara Haley from St. Richards Episcopal School in Indianapolis, Indiana for her video about President George W. Bush. Watch his winning video  here. 
    • 8th graders Delaney Guy and Nora Steinhauser from Cooperative Middle School in Stratham, New Hampshire for their video about President James Polk. Watch their winning video  here.

    37 students throughout the country each won their Presidential Category and received $100 awards. Check out all of their videos  here.

    The 2026 Project POTUS competition begins Election Day, November 4, 2025 and all submissions must be entered by Presidents Day, February 16, 2026. Learn more  here.

    Project POTUS is made possible by the generous support from Russell & Penny Fortune. 

    About the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site

    The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is the former home of the 23rd U.S. President. Now celebrating its 150th anniversary, it is a stunningly restored National Historic Landmark that shares the legacy of Indiana’s only President and First Lady with tens of thousands of people annually through guided tours, educational programs, special events and cultural programs. Rated “Top 5 Stately Presidential Homes You Can Visit” by Architectural Digest, the Harrison’s 10,000 square foot Italianate residence in downtown Indianapolis houses nearly 11,000 curated artifacts spanning more than two centuries of American and presidential history. Recently expanded and restored through a $6 million campaign, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is also consistently ranked a Top 5 Thing To Do in Indianapolis by TripAdvisor. Signature programs and initiatives include: Future Presidents of America; Project POTUS, Candlelight Theatre; Juneteenth Foodways Festival; Wicket World of Croquet; and Off the Record. Founded in 1966 as a private 501c(3) that receives no direct federal support, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is dedicated to increasing public participation in the American system of self-government through the life stories, arts and culture of an American President. Find out more at PresidentBenjaminHarrison.org. 

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