A US district judge in Massachusetts ruled on Monday that the National Institutes of Health cancelation of hundreds of grants was “void and illegal,” and ordered the funding restored.
“This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” said Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, in ruling against the government’s widespread effort to stop a huge swath of ongoing research. “I would be blind not to call it out,” he said, adding that in his decades on the bench he had “never seen government racial discrimination like this.”
NIH cuts have approached $4 billion, with Massachusetts and its collection of large research universities the hardest hit state. In classic every-accusation-is-a-confession move, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that “DEI”-related research was somehow used to “support unlawful discrimination.” Judge Young said he saw no evidence that was the case: “From what I can see, it’s the reverse.” The government offered no further proof beyond, apparently, vibes.
Though he acknowledged the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action, Young essentially said that did not give the government a discrimination blank check. “Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
Whether or not NIH and its reactionary, science-challenged director Jay Bhattacharya actually turn the funding spigot back on as a result of this ruling is, of course, another question entirely. And as a backdrop, the administration’s proposed NIH budget, with widespread GOP support, would chop the best biomedical research organization in the world’s legs entirely off, meaning a whole lot more than the grants in Monday’s ruling would be in danger.
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