ACE and other higher ed associations are among the groups continuing to push back against the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) decision to cancel billions of dollars in research grants after President Trump took office in January.Eight associations, including ACE, filed an amicus brief on Friday urging the Supreme Court to deny the Trump administration’s application seeking a stay of a lower court’s orders that the executive branch of the government reinstate approximately 1,200 of the canceled NIH grants.
Meanwhile, ACE along with four other associations signed a letter sent July 29 to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya asking him to reinstate all the canceled NIH grants.
Both the amicus brief and the letter note that a federal district court judge in June ordered the restoration of NIH grants, after two related legal challenges were filed contesting the unprecedented cancelations, including by a group of state attorneys general. As Inside Higher Ed reported, and our amicus brief and the July 29 letter underscore, the research and medical community are hoping that the agency will indeed restore the grants that support research and multi-year clinical trials in a broad array of areas, including vaccine hesitancy and LGBTQ+ health. U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, ruled the terminations void and unlawful, stating during a hearing he’d “never seen racial discrimination by the government like this” during his four decades as a federal judge.
The executive branch has appealed that ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, its request that Judge Young’s orders in the two cases be stayed pending the outcome of the appeal process has been denied twice so far, first by the district court and then by the court of appeals. The executive branch then turned to the Supreme Court, leading to the submission of our amicus brief filed Friday.
The brief states that, “Amici do not doubt the Executive Branch’s prerogative to set and implement policy objectives that differ from those of previous administrations. But changes in priorities must be implemented via lawful processes and must account for the scientific principles that have long governed NIH decision making—and that, indeed, both statute and regulation obligate NIH to follow. If allowed to proceed, the government’s contrary approach would inflict irreparable harm on this nation’s scientific-research enterprise. The Court should deny the government’s stay request.”
Last April, ACE and other higher education associations submitted an amicus brief to Judge Young challenging the grant cancellations. It called out the unprecedented blacklisting of research perceived to be connected to politically disfavored topics, as well as the blatant illegality of terminating existing awards without adequate explanation, notice, or adherence to legal process. The associations warned that these actions threaten to destabilize the entire biomedical research system.
In last week’s letter to NIH Director Bhattacharya, the signatory associations “request that, in the spirit of fairness and consistency, you direct the reinstatement of all grants that NIH has terminated under agency directives found by a federal court to be unlawful.”
The letter recognizes that Judge Young’s orders to reinstate the grants do not apply to all of the individual grant terminations, though they all were canceled via the same process. “We therefore request,” the associations write, “that you consider immediately reinstating every grant that was terminated under one of the rationales found by the District Court to be unlawful, which would provide relief regardless of geographic area or institution.”
In addition, there was some confusion over reports of a temporary halt last week by the White House Office of Management and Budget on some $15 billion in funding for health researchers, only to be lifted after a few hours.