Tag: sue

Universities Sue NSF Over Indirect Research Cost Policy

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.”

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May 7, 2025
Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power
UPDATE: The hearing scheduled for May 9 has been postponed until May 16 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The court will hear two similar motions at the same time and consider whether to temporarily restore the cuts to research and data collections and bring back fired federal workers at the Education Department. More details on the underlying cases in the article below.

Some of the biggest names in education research — who often oppose each other in scholarly and policy debates — are now united in their desire to fight the cuts to data and scientific studies at the U.S. Department of Education.

The roster includes both Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the first head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) who initiated studies for private school vouchers, and Sean Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist who studies inequity in education. They are just two of the dozens of scholars who have submitted declarations to the courts against the department and Secretary Linda McMahon. They describe how their work has been harmed and argue that the cuts will devastate education research.

Professional organizations representing the scholars are asking the courts to restore terminated research and data and reverse mass firings at the Institute of Education Sciences, the division that collects data on students and schools, awards research grants, highlights effective practices and measures student achievement.

Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

Three major suits were filed last month in U.S. federal courts, each brought by two different professional organizations. The six groups are the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). The American Educational Research Association alone represents 25,000 researchers and there is considerable overlap in membership among the professional associations.

Prominent left-wing and progressive legal organizations spearheaded the suits and are representing the associations. They are Public Citizen, Democracy Forward and the Legal Defense Fund, which was originally founded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) but is an independent legal organization. Allison Scharfstein, an attorney for the Legal Defense Fund, said education data is critical to documenting educational disparities and improve education for Black and Hispanic students. “We know that the data is needed for educational equity,” Scharfstein said.

Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

Officers at the research associations described the complex calculations in suing the government, mindful that many of them work at universities that are under attack by the Trump administration and that its members are worried about retaliation.

“A situation like this requires a bit of a leap of faith,” said Elizabeth Tipton, president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness and a statistician at Northwestern University. “We were reminded that we are the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and that this is an existential threat. If the destruction that we see continues, we won’t exist, and our members won’t exist. This kind of research won’t exist. And so the board ultimately decided that the tradeoffs were in our favor, in the sense that whether we won or we lost, that we had to stand up for this.”

The three suits are similar in that they all contend that the Trump administration exceeded its executive authority by eliminating activities Congress requires by law. Private citizens or organizations are generally barred from suing the federal government, which enjoys legal protection known as “sovereign immunity.” But under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, private organizations can ask the courts to intervene when executive agencies have acted arbitrarily, capriciously and not in accordance with the law. The suits point out, for example, that the Education Science Reform Act of 2002 specifically requires the Education Department to operate Regional Education Laboratories and conduct longitudinal and special data collections, activities that the Education Department eliminated in February among a mass cancelation of projects.

Related: DOGE’s death blow to education studies

The suits argue that it is impossible for the Education Department to carry out its congressionally required duties, such as the awarding of grants to study and identify effective teaching practices, after the March firing of almost 90 percent of the IES staff and the suspension of panels to review grant proposals. The research organizations argue that their members and the field of education research will be irreparably harmed.

Of immediate concern are two June deadlines. Beginning June 1, researchers are scheduled to lose remote access to restricted datasets, which can include personally identifiable information about students. The suits contend that loss harms the ability of researchers to finish projects in progress and plan future studies. The researchers say they are also unable to publish or present studies that use this data because there is no one remaining inside the Education Department to review their papers for any inadvertent disclosure of student data.

The second concern is that the termination of more than 1,300 Education Department employees will become final by June 10. Technically, these employees have been on administrative leave since March, and lawyers for the education associations are concerned that it will be impossible to rehire these veteran statisticians and research experts for congressionally required tasks.

The suits describe additional worries. Outside contractors are responsible for storing historical datasets because the Education Department doesn’t have its own data warehouse, and researchers are worried about who will maintain this critical data in the months and years ahead now that the contracts have been canceled. Another concern is that the terminated contracts for research and surveys include clauses that will force researchers to delete data about their subjects. “Years of work have gone into these studies,” said Dan McGrath, an attorney at Democracy Forward, who is involved in one of the three suits. “At some point it won’t be possible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Related: Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

In all three of the suits, lawyers have asked the courts for a preliminary injunction to reverse the cuts and firings, temporarily restoring the studies and bringing federal employees back to the Education Department to continue their work while the judges take more time to decide whether the Trump administration exceeded its authority. A first hearing on a temporary injunction is scheduled on Friday in federal district court in Washington.*

A lot of people have been waiting for this. In February, when DOGE first started cutting non-ideological studies and data collections at the Education Department, I wondered why Congress wasn’t protesting that its laws were being ignored. And I was wondering where the research community was. It was so hard to get anyone to talk on the record. Now these suits, combined with Harvard University’s resistance to the Trump administration, show that higher education is finally finding its voice and fighting what it sees as existential threats.

The three suits:
1. Public Citizen suit
Plaintiffs: Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)

Attorneys: Public Citizen Litigation Group

Defendants: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education

Date filed: April 4

Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Documents: complaint, Public Citizen press release,

A concern: Data infrastructure. “We want to do all that we can to protect essential data and research infrastructure,” said Michal Kurlaender, president of AEFP and a professor at University of California, Davis.

Status: Public Citizen filed a request for a temporary injunction on April 17 that was accompanied by declarations from researchers on how they and the field of education have been harmed. The Education Department filed a response on April 30. A hearing is scheduled for May 9.
1. Democracy Forward suit
Plaintiffs: American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE)

Attorneys: Democracy Forward

Defendants: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Acting Director of the Institute of Education Sciences Matthew Soldner

Date filed: April 14

Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division

Documents: complaint, Democracy Forward press release, AERA letter to members

A concern: Future research. “IES has been critical to fostering research on what works, and what does not work, and for providing this information to schools so they can best prepare students for their future,” said Ellen Weiss, executive director of SREE. “Our graduate students are stalled in their work and upended in their progress toward a degree. Practitioners and policymakers also suffer great harm as they are left to drive decisions without the benefit of empirical data and high-quality research,” said Felice Levine, executive director of AERA.

Status: A request for a temporary injunction was filed April 29, accompanied by declarations from researchers on how their work is harmed.
1. Legal Defense Fund suit
Plaintiffs: National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)

Attorneys: Legal Defense Fund

Defendants: The U.S. Department of Education and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

Date filed: April 24

Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Documents: complaint, LDF press release

A concern: Data quality. “The law requires not only data access but data quality,” said Andrew Ho, a Harvard University professor of education and former president of the National Council on Measurement in Education. “For 88 years, our organization has upheld standards for valid measurements and the research that depends on these measurements. We do so again today.”

Status: A request for a temporary injunction was filed May 2.*

* Correction: This paragraph was corrected to make clear that lawyers in all three suits have asked the courts to temporarily reverse the research and data cuts and personnel firings. Also, May 9th is a Friday, not a Thursday. We regret the error.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about Education Department lawsuits was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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May 5, 2025
States sue to recover ESSER extended spending allowances
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Dive Brief:
- Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sued the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday for halting previously approved extended spending timelines for emergency pandemic funding, calling the department’s action “tremendously harmful” to states, school districts, private schools and contractors.
- The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, called the action “arbitrary and capricious” and said it violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The plaintiffs are seeking an order requiring the Education Department to honor the spending extensions.
- The policy pivot is causing states and districts to cancel tutoring services, facility improvement projects, reading interventions, after-school programming and more. District and school staff layoffs are likely if the federal government does not make reimbursement payments, the lawsuit said.
Dive Insight:

The Education Department’s March 28 letter canceling the extensions, sent at 5:03 p.m. on a Friday, has “already caused substantial confusion” and financial upheaval regarding late liquidation for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, the plaintiffs said.

States, districts, private schools and contractors have already created budgets, hired staff, offered services to families and children and developed operating plans based on pre-approved spending extensions, according to their lawsuit.

In Arizona, for example, a school district on the Navajo reservation will likely need to lay off teachers and staff to cover costs that were supposed to be paid for by American Rescue Plan-ESSER dollars. That money had been pre-approved by the Education Department for a tutoring service for reading and math instruction and to repair aging buildings. After the Education Department rescinded the spending extensions, the tutoring service and infrastructure project were terminated, the lawsuit said.

The Education Department’s one-page March 28 letter, signed by U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, did offer states an opportunity to continue to extend spending by reapplying for Education Department approvals on a per-contract basis. But McMahon’s letter also said the spending extensions were “not consistent with the Department’s priorities” and that states had failed to meet spending deadlines set out in federal regulations.

While spending deadlines for all three congressionally approved allocations for K-12 COVID-19 recovery have expired, the Education Department under the Biden administration allowed for a longer spending runway, giving states and districts an extra 14 months to spend down the funds.

For instance, the spending deadline for ARP-ESSER was Jan. 28, but the late liquidation deadline is March 30, 2026. For funds under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the original spending deadline was Jan. 29, 2024, but the extended spending deadline was March 28. The spending extension for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was March 28, 2024.

In late February, the Education Department told K-12 Dive that about $2.5 billion out of a total $121.9 billion in ARP-ESSER funds remained to be spent by districts in the 41 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia that had received extensions. About $433 million was left to be spent by states under ARP’s Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools allocation.

The lawsuit says several states received approvals from the Education Department for ESSER spending extensions after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. For example, Illinois said the Education Department approved its request on Jan. 22 to extend spending under ARP-ESSER. The state said it still has $77.2 million left to spend in federal COVID funds for education.

One state — Oregon — said it submitted a request for late liquidation of EANS funds at 5:02 p.m. on March 28, or one minute before the Education Department letter went out. The state has not received a response.

Pennsylvania submitted a spending extension request for EANS funds on Feb. 10 but the Education Department has not responded to the state’s “repeated requests,” according to the lawsuit. About a month earlier, on Jan. 8, the department did grant Pennsylvania an extension for ESSER funds targeting supports for homeless children and youth.

While there was no hard deadline for states to make late liquidation requests, January 2024 guidance from the Education Department recommended submissions be made prior to Dec. 31, 2024, for ARP funds so there would be minimal disruption to accessing funds.

Democratic lawmakers in Congress are also calling for the Education Department to reverse its cancellation of ESSER spending extensions, saying the department changed the rules abruptly and has no recognition of the lasting impacts of the pandemic on students and schools.

Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown, in a Thursday statement, said, “The Trump Administration’s decision to cut this funding has thrown Maryland schools into turmoil and uncertainty and threatens valuable programs that help homeless and low-income students recover from the painful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

He added, “This is a breathtakingly heartless action that threatens to change children’s futures for the worse, and our Office will not stand for it.”

Thursday’s lawsuit was filed by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and the mostly Democratic state attorneys general of Arizona, California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. All the attorneys general are Democratic, except Hawaii’s, whose office is nonpartisan.
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April 11, 2025
Researchers sue NIH over mass cuts to DEI grants
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Dive Brief:
- Researchers, unions and others sued the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday over the agency’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion-related research activity that has resulted in lost grant funding and career opportunities.
- Plaintiffs, including dozens of academic scientists, alleged that the agency’s leaders, starting in February, “upended NIH’s enviable track record of rigor and excellence, launching a reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor.”
- They are asking a federal court to block NIH from enforcing its anti-DEI directives both in the short term and permanently and to restore grants to researchers that the agency has cut under the Trump administration.
Dive Insight:

The complaint counts at least 678 research projects that have been terminated by NIH, some of them potentially by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency rather than NIH staff.

The recently cut grants amount to over $2.4 billion, the lawsuit noted. Of that, $1.3 billion was already spent on projects “stopped midstream that is now wasted,” and $1.1 billion has been revoked.

Plaintiffs argue that grant terminations “cut across diverse topics that NIH is statutorily required to research,” many of which involve life-threatening diseases. Specifically, they argue that NIH’s actions violate the Administrative Procedures Act and constitutional limits on executive branch authority, and are unconstitutionally vague.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in Massachusetts, plaintiffs detailed how their lives, careers and potentially life-saving research have been thrown into turmoil by the NIH’s attack on DEI under President Donald Trump.

Among them is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico’s medical school who studies alcohol’s impact on Alzheimer’s risk. The researcher, the first in her family to graduate college, sought a grant created to help promising researchers from underrepresented backgrounds transition to tenure-track faculty positions.

According to the lawsuit, the researcher “satisfies the eligibility criteria for the program and invested months into assembling her application,” but NIH refused to consider it “solely because the program is designed to help diversify the profession.”

Another plaintiff, a Ph.D. candidate at a private California university, had received a high score on a research funding application for a dissertation proposal that would have studied suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness.

But the candidate learned that new restrictions on LGBTQ-related research meant the NIH would not likely fund the project. The turn of events will harm the researcher’s “ability to progress through their PhD program,” the complaint said.

Others include a University of Michigan social work professor whose research focuses on sexual violence in minority communities. The NIH has cut at least six grants supporting her research because the agency said it “no longer effectuates agency priorities,” according to the complaint.

Setting the various cuts in motion was internal NIH guidance, most of it revealed by the news media and cited in the complaint, that directed agency staff to terminate and deny DEI-related grant proposals. One memo instructed NIH officials to “completely excise all DEI activities.”

Staff guidance included research topics for grant terminations. One document forbade three research activity topics: China, DEI and transgender issues. A later document, the complaint alleges, effectively banned research grants around vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19.

NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The scale of impact by both DEI cuts and other funding chaos at NIH is broad, cutting across much of the higher ed world. The United Auto Workers, one of the plaintiffs, counts tens of thousands of members who depend on NIH grants for their work and training, according to the lawsuit. It also noted 18,000 full-time graduate students who received their primary federal funding support through NIH in 2022.
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April 3, 2025
Faculty Organizations Sue on Behalf of Columbia Members

Days after Columbia University yielded to a list of demands from the Trump administration, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit on behalf of members at Columbia over $400 million in frozen federal research funding.

The lawsuit names multiple government agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration.

Columbia had been in a standoff with the Trump administration over the decision to freeze federal research funding due to alleged antisemitism stemming from pro-Palestinian student protests last year. Ultimately, university leaders decided to avoid a legal fight, even as legal scholars at Columbia and in conservative circles questioned whether the demands were lawful.

In a news release Tuesday, the same day they filed the lawsuit, the AAUP and AFT alleged that the Trump administration used “cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.”

The 87-page lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York.

The AAUP and AFT have cast Trump’s demands and the freezing of $400 million in grants and contracts as a “coercive tactic” that undermines institutional autonomy and harms scientific research. Plaintiffs are asking the court to order the Trump administration to lift its freeze on Columbia’s research funding and declare the government’s demands for reform unlawful. They have also requested unspecified damages.

“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” Reinhold Martin, president of Columbia-AAUP and a professor of architecture, said in the statement announcing the lawsuit. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”

The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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March 26, 2025
AAUP, Middle East Studies Group Sue Trump Over Deportations

Accusing the Trump administration of creating a “climate of repression and fear on university campuses,” two faculty groups sued the federal government Tuesday to stop the president’s efforts to deport noncitizen students and faculty who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.

The Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors argue in the lawsuit that what they call Trump’s “ideological-deportation policy” violates the First and Fifth Amendments and the Administrative Procedure Act. They are asking a federal judge to rule that the policy is unconstitutional. This is the second lawsuit challenging the policy, though this legal action includes more faculty and students.

The litigation comes after immigration officers have, over the past month, targeted international students and postdoctoral fellows for alleged participation in pro-Palestinian protests, raiding their dorm rooms and revoking their visas.

Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting a Columbia student, who moved to the United States from Korea when she was 7 but is now a legal permanent resident. The New York Times reported that the government argued Yunseo Chung’s “presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy goal of stopping the spread of antisemitism.”

But the judge said Tuesday that “nothing in the record” showed that Chung posed a “foreign-policy risk,” according to the Times.

Chung has not yet been detained. She’s just the latest student to come under fire from the administration’s crackdown on those who protested the Israel-Hamas war. That crackdown has included revoking the visas of students and faculty, giving universities names of students to target, and a social media surveillance program, according to the AAUP lawsuit.

The MESA and AAUP lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, specifically cites the cases of Chung; Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University postdoc; and Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate. Judges have also blocked the government from deporting both men.

“While President Trump and other administration officials have described pro-Palestinian campus protests as ‘pro-Hamas,’ they have stretched that label beyond the breaking point to encompass any speech supportive of Palestinian human rights or critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza,” the suit says. “They have left no doubt that their new policy entails the arrest, detention and deportation of noncitizen students and faculty for constitutionally protected speech and association.”

Attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia are among the lawyers representing the scholarly groups.

MESA and the AAUP—along with the AAUP chapters at Harvard, New York and Rutgers Universities—filed the suit against the federal government, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, plus their agencies.

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement that “taking over buildings, defacing private property, and harassing Jewish students does not constitute free speech.”

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” the spokesperson added. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.”

The White House provided a similar statement from a Justice Department spokesperson, who said, “This department makes no apologies for its efforts to defend President Trump’s agenda in court and protect Jewish Americans from vile antisemitism.”

Beyond the immediate implications for students and faculty who face deportation, the policy has a broader chilling effect on campus free speech, the lawsuit argues.

“Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy,” the suit says. “Others have declined opportunities to publish commentary and scholarship, stopped contributing to classroom discussions, or deleted past work from online databases and websites. Many now hesitate to address political issues on social media, or even in private texts.”

The lawsuit adds the policy harms the plaintiff associations “because they are no longer able to learn from and engage with noncitizen members to the extent they once did, and because they have had to divert resources from other projects to address the all-too-real possibility that their noncitizen members will be arrested, imprisoned, and deported for exercising rights that the Constitution guarantees.”

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March 26, 2025
Democratic AGs sue over cancellation of teacher grants
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Dive Brief:
- Democratic attorneys generals in eight states said the U.S. Department of Education “arbitrarily” and “improperly” terminated about $600 million in teacher training grants, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the District of Massachusetts
- The complaint said the abrupt cancellation of the grants will “immediately disrupt teacher workforce pipelines, increase reliance on underqualified educators, and destabilize local school systems.” The lawsuit seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions to restore funding and access to these programs.
- The suit is the second filed against the grants termination — the first one came three days earlier from three teacher preparation groups — and adds to mounting legal pushback to the Trump administration’s efforts to scrub programs associated with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Dive Insight:

The Education Department recently confirmed that the grant programs impacted by the cuts announced last month were for the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant. The agency said the cuts were made because the programs trained teachers on “divisive ideologies.”

Examples the agency provided in its Feb. 17 announcement included professional development workshops on dismantling racial bias and activities that required educators to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities.

Supporters of DEI rollbacks in education view the activities as illegal discrimination and wasteful spending of federal funds.

But those opposing the grant eliminations say the programs help address a severe lack of teachers and support students in underserved areas.

“Kids in rural and underserved communities deserve access to a quality education, and programs like SEED and TQP help bring qualified teachers to classrooms that desperately need it,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a March 6 statement. “Slashing funding for these critical programs robs students of the opportunity to succeed and thrive.”

In New York, James said the cancellation of TQP programs at SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo Public Schools, Buffalo Academy of Science Charter, and REACH Academy Charter School alone would impact more than 120 teachers and about 13,000 students. Also affected by the elimination of SEED programs are 100 teachers and some 6,000 pre-K-12 students at SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo Public Schools, Amherst Central School District, and Kenmore Tonawanda Union-Free School District.

Joining James in the lawsuit were attorneys general from seven other states: California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and Wisconsin.

Just days earlier, on March 3, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, National Center for Teacher Residencies and Maryland Association of Colleges for Teacher Education also sued to overturn the program cuts. That challenge, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, said the Education Department “failed to follow statute and Federal regulations in terminating the grants.”

Additionally, more than 100 national and state education organizations sent a letter to congressional leaders last week urging them to reverse the cancellations of SEED, TQP and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program grants.
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March 7, 2025
LAWSUIT: Videographers sue to overturn National Parks Service arbitrary permit scheme

JACKSON HOLE, Wy. Dec. 18, 2024 — Picture three people standing next to each other in Yellowstone National Park. One’s an ordinary tourist, one’s a news reporter, and the third’s a documentary filmmaker. They’re all filming Old Faithful, using the exact same iPhone, and without disturbing anyone around them.

Under federal law, the tourist and the reporter are doing nothing wrong. But the documentarian could face heavy fines — even jail time.

That’s why the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression today filed a lawsuit on behalf of nature and sports photographers and filmmakers Alexander Rienzie and Connor Burkesmith. FIRE’s suit aims to overturn the National Park Service’s onerous, arbitrary, and unconstitutional permit-and-fee scheme that charges Americans for the right to film in public spaces.

“The national parks belong to the American public,” said FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere. “If you have a right to be there, you have a right to film there. The federal government can’t tax Americans to exercise their constitutional rights.”

Joining FIRE’s lawsuit as co-counsel and co-plaintiffs is the National Press Photographers Association, which represents thousands of visual journalists, including Alex and Connor. Although the NPS exempts filming for “news-gathering” from its permit scheme, the NPPA has for years argued that the law imposes an unfair burden on photographers and filmographers, who can’t always know ahead of time who they plan to sell their work to, or even if they plan to sell it at all.

“For decades, the National Press Photographers Association has been working to support the rights of visual journalists and other photographers to document the beauty of our natural resources and the people who visit and care for them in our national parks,” said NPPA President Carey Wagner. “It is unfortunate that the actions and policies of the National Park Service have never fully respected the First Amendment rights of photographers, and it’s even more disappointing that it has become necessary to take the Park Service to court in order to resolve our members’ concerns. NPPA is enormously grateful to FIRE for taking on this case on behalf of all photographers.”

Alex and Connor wanted to film in Grand Teton National Park in September to document an attempt by an athlete to break the record for the fastest climb up the Grand Teton. They planned to have only two or three people, using small handheld cameras and tripods, on the 16-mile route for the shoot. In fact, to keep up with the fast pace of the speedrun, they would carry less gear than the typical climber going up the mountain.

But under current law, whether a filmmaker needs a permit to film in a national park doesn’t depend on the amount of gear they bring or how disruptive filming might be. The only thing that matters is whether their purpose is “commercial.” The rule could apply to filming a big blockbuster movie near the Grand Canyon (where the scale of the project might justify a permit requirement), but also to a small-time YouTuber who posts a video of their jog through the National Mall.

“Congress wanted to keep big Hollywood productions from taking over the parks and keeping others from enjoying their natural beauty,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “But the current law wasn’t written for a world where anyone with a smartphone has a film studio in their pocket.”

Alex and Connor knew they might use the footage to produce a documentary film, so they filed for a permit and explained how small their impact would be. But NPS employees have wide and unquestioned discretion under the law to deny permits. NPS denied the permit on the grounds that it could turn the speedrun into a “competitive event”— and pocketed the non-refundable $325 application fee.

“Independent filmmakers don’t have the resources of the big production companies,” said Connor. “It’s a gut punch every time we throw down hundreds of dollars, only to be denied permits for reasons that are vague, arbitrary, and unfair. As someone who needs to film outdoor sports where they happen, it’s a threat to my livelihood.”

COURTESY PHOTOS OF ALEX AND CONNOR FOR MEDIA USE

Alex and Connor were forced to choose between risking prosecution, or letting a potentially historic event go undocumented. For dedicated documentarians like themselves, it was an easy choice: They filmed without the permit in September.

“In the entire time we were up there, we didn’t get in the way of anyone else’s enjoyment of Grand Teton,” said Alex. “To us, the Grand is a very special mountain that we’ve spent countless hours exploring.”

An NPS spokesperson later announced they had determined that Alex and Connor’s actions didn’t meet all the criteria for charges—but if their work had been featured “in a commercial or a catalog or something like that,” it would be “less of a gray area.” Far from settling the issue, the NPS statement effectively signaled that Alex and Connor could still face charges if they ever sell or use their footage.

FIRE and the NPPA are seeking an injunction in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming to prevent that outcome, and to put a permanent end to a system where individual park employees can deny Americans their First Amendment rights on a whim.

“I chose this line of work because I love the national parks,” said Connor. “Photographers and videographers are the best advocates the parks have; the more people see and understand their unique value, the stronger their desire to protect them. It’s time for the Park Service to stop throwing up roadblocks and work with us, not against us.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

CONTACT:

Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org

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December 18, 2024