The plaintiffs, which include the American Association of University Professors, UAW International and UAW Local 481, allege in the lawsuit that numerous researchers and academics will lose their jobs as a result of their institutions not being able to afford the new fee. (An H-1B visa previously cost $2,000 to $5,000.) Universities, along with national labs and nonprofit research institutions, were also exempt from the annual cap on the number of new visas, and it’s unclear whether the new fee will apply to higher ed.
The New York Times reported that this lawsuit “appears to be the first major challenge to the new fee.”
The fee, the complaint states, “will result in significant and potentially catastrophic setbacks to research that benefits the American public and ensures the United States remains a leading source of innovation and expertise. For example, the fee will likely result in sharp cutbacks in the employment of highly talented foreign workers and severe setbacks for university research, graduate programs, and clinical care, compounding an anticipated shortfall of 5.3 million skilled workers over the next decade.”
The lawsuit highlights several specific examples of researchers whose work would be interrupted by this change, including an unnamed plaintiff who studies conditions and diseases that cause blindness.
“Her departure will set back the crucial research she is conducting, disrupting the lab’s ongoing work and ability to secure future research funding, preventing her department from getting any future funding through her, and potentially delaying the availability of treatment for the conditions that are the focus of her research,” it states.
The plaintiffs note in the lawsuit that the $100,000 fee “applies even where workers are already lawfully present in the United States under, for example, a student visa or another immigration status, and are seeking to change to H-1B status.”
They argue in part that the president does not have the statutory authority to increase the fee for H-1B visas. They are asking the judge to nullify the $100,000 fee and allow H-1B visas to be processed as they were previously.
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A coalition of University of California faculty groups and employee unions sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the federal government’s efforts to “exert ideological control” over the system and its 10 institutions.
Over the past three months, the federal government has cut off at least $584 million in grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, sought $1 billion from the system to restore that funding and delivered a wide-ranging list of ultimatums that would dramatically reshape the state’s university system through political interference.
In their lawsuit, the coalition — which represented tens of thousands of faculty, staff and students within the university system — called the cuts unconstitutional and an “arbitrary, ideologically driven, and unlawful use of financial coercion” that threatened U.S. higher education and advancement.
“The administration has made clear its intention to commandeer this public university system and to purge from its campuses viewpoints with which the President and his administration disagree,” the lawsuit said.
“Campaign to control universities”
President Donald Trump began laying the groundwork for “his administration’s coordinated attack on academic freedom and free speech and campaign to control universities” shortly after retaking office in January, the lawsuit alleged.
“Rather than acknowledging educational institutions like the UC as the assets to this nation that they are, the Trump administration views them as barriers to the President’s agenda of ideological dominance,” the lawsuit said.
At the end of July, the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that UCLA had violated civil rights law by failing to adequately protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. A week later, the federal government suspended $584 million in grants to UCLA over the allegations.
Tuesday’s lawsuit alleged DOJ picked and chose from university documents to make the argument it had wanted to from the start. For example, the agency relied heavily on an October report from UCLA that found antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on its campus. But DOJ entirely failed to address the improvements UCLA had undertaken since — a factor similar to one cited by a federal judge when she struck down the Trump administration’s $2.2 billion funding freeze at Harvard earlier this month.
DOJ also did not explain what connection the specific research funding cuts had to alleged antisemitism, forcing all university employees to prepare “for the possibility of significant and immediate termination of funding,” the lawsuit said.
The University of California, one of the largest research systems in the country, derives a third of its annual operating budget — $17 billion — from federal funding, according to the lawsuit.
The Trump administration has also unlawfully disregarded the process by which the government can terminate or withhold federal funds, the lawsuit argued.
Addressing the cuts on Aug. 6, system President James Milliken said they did “nothing to address antisemitism,” but said the University of California would enter into negotiations with the Trump administration to have the funding restored.
In the event of a major loss of federal funding, the system would need, at minimum, between $4 million and $5 billion just to survive, Milliken told state lawmakers this month.
Dramatic and expensive ultimatums
On Aug. 8, two days after Milliken announced the forthcoming negotiations, the system received an unprecedented list of wide-ranging demands from the Trump administration tying its federal funding to total compliance, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs cited a copy of the list, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, which the University of California has not made public.
The letter would require UCLA to install a “resolution monitor” — appointed with final approval by the Trump administration — who would hold significant authority over campus affairs.
UCLA would also be forced to provide the federal government regular access to “a wide variety of records” on faculty, staff and students, “as deemed necessary by the resolution monitor.”
“The only exception is for attorney-client privilege, not for speech, association, or privacy purposes,” the lawsuit said.
The Trump administration also demanded that UCLA inhibit speech by its non-citizen students, enact policies to bar international students who are “likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment,” and implement required trainings to “socialize” international students to campus norms.
“In making these demands, the Trump administration is seeking to impose speech restrictions upon students, faculty, academic employees, and staff employees that would violate the First Amendment if imposed directly either by the university itself or by the federal government,” the lawsuit said.
UCLA would further be compelled to cooperate with all local and federal law enforcement, including immigration authorities, and enact specific restrictions on expressive activities and bar demonstrators from wearing masks.
In addition to the ultimatums, the university would have to pay, at minimum, $1 billion to restore the $584 million in grants.
The plaintiffs, along with state lawmakers, lambasted the proposed payment as extortion. The lawsuit argued that no federal agency has the authority to demand a $1 billion monetary penalty for civil rights violations and disputed the DOJ’s findings.
A legal blockade — maybe
Citing ongoing irreparable harm, the plaintiffs — who do not include the University of California or its institutions — are asking a federal court to block the cuts and coercive actions by the federal government while their case is heard.
The system and its universities have already begun “to alter its policies and practices seemingly in capitulation to the Trump administration,” resulting in a widespread chilling effect, the lawsuit said.
As examples, it listed a new policy allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expanded access to the system’s medical centers and the University of California, Berkeley’s decision to turn over the names of 160 students and employees to the federal government.
Todd Wolfson, president of AAUP, framed the lawsuit as a move to combat “the authoritarian takeover of our universities.”
“We will not stand by as the Trump administration destroys one of the largest public university higher education systems in the country and bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement,” Wolfson said in a Tuesday statement.
The list of plaintiffs includes:
The American Association of University Professors.
The American Federation of Teachers.
AFSCME Local 3299.
California Nurses Association and National Nurses United.
Council of UC Faculty Associations.
Faculty associations from each University of California campus.
Teamsters Local 2010.
International UAW.
UAW Local 4811.
University of California Los Angeles Faculty Association.
University Council-AFT.
UPTE-CWA 9119.
UCLA has already racked up one legal win against the federal government.
Last month, a federal judge ordered NSF to restore the funding it “indefinitely suspended” from UCLA in July — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — allegedly over antisemitism concerns. The agency did not seek to appeal and said the funding has been reinstated.
The Trump administration has frozen more than $500 million in federal funding to UCLA.
A coalition of California education unions and faculty associations is suing the Trump administration to challenge what they say is “the illegal and coercive use of civil rights laws to attack the University of California system and the rights of their members,” the American Association of University Professors announced Tuesday.
The coalition comprises 19 groups—including the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers and 10 University of California campus faculty associations—and is represented by the legal organization Democracy Forward.
“We will not stand by as the Trump administration destroys one of the largest public university higher education systems in the country and bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement,” AAUP president Todd Wolfson said in a statement. “We stand hand in hand to protect not only our individual rights to free expression, debate, and association, but also to safeguard the health, safety, and economic mobility of our communities—all of which is at risk.”
The Trump administration has issued a litany of demands to the University of California in exchange for restored federal funding, including unfettered government access to faculty, student and staff data; cooperation with immigration enforcement; a ban on gender-inclusive restrooms and locker rooms; an official statement that the UC does not recognize transgender identity; and over a billion dollars in penalties. So far, the University of California, Los Angeles, has borne the brunt of the demands, but university system officials fear that funding freezes could extend to the system’s other campuses.
On Sept. 4, University of California, Berkeley, officials notified 160 faculty, staff and students that their names appeared in documents given to the Trump administration as part of the administration’s investigation into alleged antisemitism on campus.
“UCLA [faculty association] is honored to stand with this coalition, which presents as an important reminder of what the UC really is—the people who day in and day out do the work on UC campuses,” Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA faculty association executive board, said in a statement Tuesday. “Today, we join the people of the UC in standing up against federal extortion, job loss, bans on speech and expression—against any effort to dismantle core public values that have made the UC great.”
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Dive Brief:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued the University of Texas System on Wednesdayon behalf of students over a new state law that directs public colleges to prohibit expressive activitieson campusfrom 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
The lawsuit also takes aim at the statute’s provisions that prohibit inviting speakers to campus, using devices to amplify speech, or playing drums or other percussive instruments during the last two weeks of any term.
FIREcalled the provisions “blatantly unconstitutional,” arguing they violate First Amendment and due process rights on public colleges.The group is urging the judge overseeing the case to declare the prohibitions unconstitutional and to permanently block the UT System from enforcing them.
Dive Insight:
Texas state Sen. Brandon Creighton— who authored the billand has been named the sole finalist for chancellor of theTexas Tech University System — has framed the legislation as a response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations campuses both within Texas and across the nation last year.
“While the world watched Columbia, Harvard and other campuses across the country taken hostage by pro-terrorist mobs last year, Texas stood firm. UT allowed protest, not anarchy,” Creighton told Austin American-Statesman earlier this year after lawmakers passed his bill.
In the new lawsuit, several student groups— including the independent student newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas, an interdenominational student ministry,and libertarian organization Young Americans for Liberty — say the legislation blocks a broad array of protected speech.
That’s because the legislation defines expressive activities as “any speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
“Early morning prayer meetings on campus, for example, are now prohibited by law,” the lawsuit says. “Students best beware of donning a political t-shirt during the wrong hours. And they must think twice before inviting a pre-graduation speaker, holding a campus open-mic night to unwind before finals, or even discussing the wrong topic — or discussing almost anything — in their dorms after dark.”
Other activities covered by the 10-hour daily block on expressive activities include screening a film at midnight, “wearing a Halloween costume after 10 p.m.,” photographing the sunrise, setting up an information booth early on the morning of election day to boost voter awareness, or even saying, ‘Good morning,’ the lawsuit says.
The Retrograde, a student-run newspaper at UT-Dallas, voiced concerns that the ban covers their reporting and publishing deep into the night. Working in those hours is necessary for the students to fulfill their journalist mission, according to the lawsuit.
Similarly, the student ministry group, the Fellowship of Christian University Students’ chapter on UT-Dallas, often meet to discuss issues of faith — even after their official events conclude at 10 p.m.
“The First Amendment doesn’t set when the sun goes down,” FIRE senior supervising attorney JT Morris said in a statement Wednesday. “University students have expressive freedom whether it’s midnight or midday, and Texas can’t just legislate those constitutional protections out of existence.”
Along with the UT System’s board members and chancellor, the lawsuit also names the heads of UT-Austin and UT-Dallas as defendants.
The UT System said via email Thursday that it has not reviewed the lawsuit and declined to comment further. UT-Austin and UT-Dallas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 10-hour daily block on expressive activities exempts commercial speech. According to the lawsuit, that means students would be banned from protesting world hunger at 7 a.m. but they would not be prevented from hosting a bake sale at that time.
That type of content-based restriction makes the law unconstitutional, the lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit also argues against the prohibitions on certain types of expressive activities — including inviting speakers or playing percussive instruments — during the last two weeks of any term. Those bans are overly broad, the lawsuit alleges.
UT-Austin, for instance, has seven academic terms, meaning bans on those expressive activities would cover 98 days of the year. At UT-Dallas, these bans would be in place for over 90 days, according to the lawsuit.
Twenty states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Monday afternoon, challenging the administration’s decision earlier this month to restrict publicly funded programs — including those related to education — based on immigration status.
The lawsuit, led by New York, argues that the restrictions to previously inclusive programs like Head Start will hurt low-income families and lead to the “collapse of some of the nation’s most vital public programs.”
Seeking to block the changes in the short and long term, the states allege the U.S. Department of Education and three other federal agencies did not follow the required rulemaking process in issuing new immigration verification requirements.
Dive Insight:
In July 10 announcements, the Education Department said it will require immigration status verification for adult education services like dual enrollment and career training programs, while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandated such verification for participation in Head Start programs.
HHS said at the time that Head Start would be “reserved for American citizens from now on.″ An HHS spokesperson clarified to K-12 Dive on July 10 that children of green card holders will remain eligible for the program and said Head Start agencies will determine eligibility based on the immigration status of the child. Head Start has heretofore been open to any child eligible based on their age or their family’s low-income status, regardless of immigration status.
However, the lawsuit filed Monday alleges that the policy changes will impact not only undocumented immigrants, but also people holding legal status, such as temporary workers, exchange visitors and those with student visas. The suit was filed in federal district court in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.
The state attorneys general filing the lawsuit also warned that even U.S. citizens and lawful residents could be denied services, since many low-income individuals lack government-issued identification.
“For decades, states like New York have built health, education, and family support systems that serve anyone in need,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a press statement on Monday. “Now, the federal government is pulling that foundation out from under us overnight, jeopardizing cancer screenings, early childhood education, primary care, and so much more.”
James and the coalition filing the lawsuit said the policies are already “causing significant disruption” as state programs are expected to comply immediately without the infrastructure they say is necessary to do so.
“Some longstanding providers, including those serving children, pregnant patients, refugees, and other vulnerable populations, will not be able to comply under any timeline and are already facing the risk of closure,” James’ statement said.
These changes have alarmed civil rights advocates — who say the changes will harm the very low-income children Head Start is intended to serve. The National Head Start Association, which represents Head Start workers, meanwhile, has said the Head Start Act has never required them to check the citizenship or immigration status of children prior to their enrollment in the 60 years of the program’s existence.
Upon release of the policy change on July 10, the American Civil Liberties Union immediately threatened to expand an existing lawsuit over the Trump administration’s actions vis-a-vis Head Start to include “this new attack on Head Start.” In April, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s moves to gut Head Start by shuttering half of the regional Office of Head Start offices and laying off much of the federal offices’ staff.
Plaintiffs in that lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington state, include parent groups and the Head Start associations of Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Implementation of this directive will create fear and confusion for immigrant families about enrolling their children in Head Start regardless of what their legal status may be. This will harm children and destabilize Head Start programs,” said Lori Rifkin, litigation director at the Impact Fund, in a statement on July 10. The Impact Fund, a public interest law group, is representing plaintiffs in the Head Start lawsuit alongside ACLU.
“If the administration moves forward with publication of this notice, we will take legal action,” RIfkin said at the time.
The Department of Education has not specified an implementation date for the new restrictions, but has said it “generally” wouldn’t be enforcing them before Aug. 9. HHS said its changes were effective immediately in its July 10 announcement.
Johns Hopkins, Arizona State and Cornell Universities are among a coalition of 12 higher education institutions and three trade groups that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense on Monday over the agency’s plan to cap universities’ indirect research cost rates at 15 percent.
While DOD secretary Pete Hegseth said in a memo last month that the policy is aimed at “accountability” and rooting out “waste,” the lawsuit argues that slashing indirect costs rates “will stop critical research in its tracks, lead to layoffs and cutbacks at universities across the country, badly undermine scientific research at United States universities, and erode our nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the DOD from enacting the cap. A hearing in the case is set for July 2.
The litigation filed this week is the latest legal challenge universities and their advocates have mounted against the federal government’s attempts to cap the amount of money it gives universities for the indirect costs of conducting federally funded research. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have all attempted to unilaterally enact similar caps, and federal judges have blocked those efforts for now.
For decades, universities have periodically negotiated with the federal government to calculate bespoke indirect cost reimbursement rates to pay for research costs that support multiple grant-funded projects, such as facilities maintenance, specialized equipment and administrative personnel. Universities factor those rates into their institutional budgets.
For example, Johns Hopkins and the DOD currently have in place a negotiated indirect cost rate of 55 percent. In 2024 JHU received $32 million from the DOD to cover indirect costs, according to the lawsuit. If the DOD’s plan moves forward, however, the university would lose $22 million.
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Dive Brief:
The state of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissionssued the U.S. Department of Education Wednesday over allegations the agency’s decades-long practice of designating federal grant funding for Hispanic-serving institutions is unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs argued that the department’s eligibility requirements for HSI grantsare discriminatory and undercut opportunities for all students, including those who are Hispanic and attend colleges that aren’t HSIs. To qualify as an HSI, a college must be nonprofit and enroll a full-time undergraduate student body that is at least 25% Hispanic.
Asserting that all colleges serve Hispanic students, Tennessee and SFFA are asking the federal court to strike down the HSI grant program’s ethnicity-based requirements and allow all institutions to apply for the grants “regardless of their ability to hit arbitrary ethnic targets.”
Dive Insight:
Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said the advocacy organization is suing to ensure equal opportunity for all, not “denying opportunity to any racial or ethnic group.”SFFA successfully challenged race-conscious admissions before the U.S. Supreme Court, getting the practice banned in 2023.
“This lawsuit challenges a federal policy that conditions the receipt of taxpayer-funded grants on the racial composition of a student body,” Blum said in a statement Wednesday. “No student or institution should be denied opportunity because they fall on the wrong side of an ethnic quota.”
HSI is a designation first established in 1992 as part of the Higher Education Act, and the federal government began distributing funds to qualifying institutions three years later.
The Education Department’s HSI division exists to distribute grant funding to “expand the educational opportunities for Hispanic Americans and other underrepresented populations,” according to its website.
Though a majority of states have at least one HSI, the institutions are clustered in areas with higher Hispanic populations.
Seven states — California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Florida, New Mexico and New Jersey — and Puerto Rico are home to 81% of HSIs,according to an analysis of federal data by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.
The Hispanic and Latino population is one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the country. In 2023, 65.2 million Hispanic and Latino people lived in the U.S., accounting for nearly a fifth of the population.The Hispanic population is expected to grow to roughly a quarter of the U.S. population by 2060, according to federal data.
In Tennessee, Hispanic students made up just over 8% of undergraduates in the 2023-24 academic year, according to HACU. The state has just one HSI — Southern Adventist University, a private nonprofit.
No public Tennessee college qualifies for HSI funding, despite all serving some population of Hispanic students, state officials said in Wednesday’s lawsuit. This puts public college students at a disadvantage and harms the institutions, they argued.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti alleged that the HSI grant system “openly discriminates against students based on ethnicity.”
“The HSI program perversely deprives even needy Hispanic students of the benefits of this funding if they attend institutions that don’t meet the government’s arbitrary quota,” he said in a Wednesday statement.
Both Skrmetti and Blum invoked the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious college admissions in their statements. Blum argued the court “made clear” that federal funding practices like the HSI grant program are “patently unconstitutional.”
That interpretation of diversity-focused federal funding has yet to be tested judicially. The high court’s 2023 decision only addressed admissions practices. But since then, conservative policymakers and those opposed to diversity initiatives have sought to apply it to a wide range of college affairs, including scholarships and diversity programs for students.
Now, they are turning their attention to a long-standing federal program through this lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Tennessee.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
However, the department under Trump has already sought to apply the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at federally funded institutions.In February, the agency threatened to pull all funding from colleges and K-12 schools that considered race in their programs and policies.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order repealing a Biden-era initiative aimed at boosting educational access via Hispanic-serving institutions. Among several goals, that program sought to expand the educational capacity of Hispanic-serving institutions through federal support.
Trump’s order — which revoked dozens of Biden-era executive actions — described the repealed policies as a move to “restore common sense” in the federal government.
Good news for Texans who like their speech free. Three bills that would have gutted speech protections under the Texas Citizens Participation Act are officially dead in the water.
At the start of the 2025 legislative session, FIRE teamed up with the Protect Free Speech Coalition — a broad coalition of civil liberties groups, news outlets, and other organizations that support free speech in Texas — to fight these bills.
The TCPA protects free speech by deterring frivolous lawsuits, or SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), intended to silence citizens with the threat of court costs.
SLAPPs are censorship disguised as lawsuits. And laws like the TCPA are a vital defense against them.
The first bill, HB 2988, would have eroded the TCPA by cutting its provision of mandatory attorney fees for speakers who successfully get a SLAPP dismissed.
That provision ensures two very important things.
First, it makes potential SLAPP filers think twice before suing. The prospect of having to pay attorney’s fees for suing over protected speech causes would-be SLAPP filers to back off.
Second, when a SLAPP is filed, mandatory fees ensure the victim can afford to defend their First Amendment rights. They no longer face the impossible choice between self-censorship and blowing their life savings on legal fees. Instead, they can fight back, knowing that they can recover their legal fees when they successfully defend their constitutionally protected expression against a baseless lawsuit.
Even though the Constitution — and not one’s finances — guarantees the freedom to speak out about issues affecting their community and government, making TCPA fee-shifting discretionary would have undermined that freedom for all but the most deep-pocketed Texans.
FIRE’s own JT Morris testified in opposition to HB 2988 when it received a hearing in the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence committee.
The other two bills — SB 336 and HB 2459 — would have made it easier for SLAPP filers to run up their victim’s legal bills before the case gets dismissed, thereby putting pressure on victims to settle and give up their rights.
Since last fall, FIRE has been working with the Protect Free Speech Coalition to oppose these bills. We’ve met with lawmakers, testified in committee, publishedcommentary, and driven grassroots opposition.
All three bills are now officially dead for the 2025 legislative session, which ends today. That means one of the strongest anti-SLAPP laws in the country remains intact and Texans can continue speaking freely without fear of ruinous litigation.
Make no mistake: SLAPPs are censorship disguised as lawsuits. And laws like the TCPA are a vital defense against them. That defense still stands. And the First Amendment still protects you and your speech on important public issues — no matter how much money’s in your wallet.
Plaintiffs allege both moves violate federal lawand threaten major research projects and millions of dollars in federal funding at universities in their states. An NSF spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The suing states — nearly all of whom have Democrat attorneys general —asked a federal judge in New York to block NSF’s indirect cost cap and its April directive barring diversity-related grants.
Dive Insight:
On April 18, the science research agency — which was founded in 1950and had a budget of $9 billion last fiscal year — issued a statement announcing it would prioritize research focused on creating “opportunities for all Americans everywhere.”
“Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities,” the agency said at the time.
The same day, NSF began issuing mass termination notices for projects that seek to boost participation in scientific fields by “women, minorities, and people with disabilities,” according to Wednesday’s complaint. Studies on misinformation and environmental justice also received termination notices.
The canceled projects include a University of Delaware study on post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidality among veterans;a new doctoral program in New Jersey promoting increased participation of underrepresented groups in science-related Ph.D.s; and a University of Oregon initiative providing some 20,000 students with learning experiences in computer science.
Later, in May, NSF moved to cap reimbursement for indirect research costs at 15% for all new grants issued to colleges. The cuts affect funding for equipment, administrative staff, laboratory construction and other expenses in research programs.
The funding cap already sparked at least one other lawsuit, from a group of higher education associations.
The change could bring steep financial and infrastructural damage to university research programs that the government relies on to advance knowledge and technology in the country, the state plaintiffs argued.
According to Wednesday’s lawsuit, the “vast majority” of university projects in the plaintiff states had negotiated indirect research rates between 40% and 60% with NSF. Those states’ “institutions will not be able to maintain essential research infrastructure and will be forced to significantly scale back or halt research, abandon numerous projects, and lay off staff,” the plaintiffs argued.
In both cases — the April directive and May indirect cost cap — the NSF violated law, the states said.
In the case of the April directive, the plaintiffs pointed to statutes that explicitly direct the agency to promote scientific participation among underrepresented groups in the U.S.
They further argue that the longstanding policy has worked, citing statistics showing that the number of women in science and engineering occupations or with related degrees doubled between 1995 and 2017. Participation in these fields by those from minority groups rose from 15% to 35% during the period.
The plaintiffs likewise argued that the indirect cost cap undermines a federal law directing the NSF to support basic scientific research and education programs.
Under the Trump administration this year, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy also both adopted similar 15% caps on overhead reimbursement. Courts have blocked both policies, though the cases are ongoing.
A coalition of universities and trade groups is suing the National Science Foundation over the independent federal agency’s plan to cap higher education institutions’ indirect research cost reimbursement rates at 15 percent.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the same day the NSF’s new policy went into effect, the coalition argued that a cut would risk the country’s standing “as a world leader in scientific discovery” and “the amount and scope of future research by universities will decline precipitously.”
It warned that “vital scientific work will come to a halt, training will be stifled, and the pace of scientific discoveries will slow” and that “progress on national security objectives, such as maintaining strategic advantages in areas like AI and quantum computing, will falter.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and 13 universities, including Arizona State University, the University of Chicago and Princeton University.
They attest that the NSF violated numerous aspects of the Administrative Procedure Act, including bypassing Congress to unilaterally institute an “arbitrary and capricious” 15 percent rate cap and failing to explain why it’s only imposing the policy on universities.
The NSF awarded $6.7 billion to some 621 universities in 2023.
Indirect costs fund research expenses that support multiple grant-funded projects, including computer systems to analyze enormous volumes of data, building maintenance and waste-management systems. In 1965 Congress enacted regulations that allow each university to negotiate a bespoke reimbursement rate with the government that reflects institutional differences in geographic inflation, research types and other variable costs.
Typical negotiated NSF indirect cost rates for universities range between 50 and 65 percent, according to the lawsuit.
And while the Trump administration has claimed that indirect cost reimbursements enable wasteful spending by universities, the plaintiffs note that an existing cap on administrative costs means that universities already contribute their own funds to cover indirect costs, “thereby subsidizing the work funded by grants and cooperative agreements.” In the 2023 fiscal year, universities paid $6.8 billion in unrecovered indirect costs, the lawsuit read.
The NSF is the third federal agency that has moved to cap indirect research costs since President Donald Trump took office in January; federal judges have already blocked similar plans from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy.
“NSF’s action is unlawful for most of the same reasons,” the lawsuit read, “and it is especially arbitrary because NSF has not even attempted to address many of the flaws the district courts found with NIH’s and DOE’s unlawful policies.”
