The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in its effort to cut research grants for the National Institutes of Health, as the administration targets diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI. On Thursday, the high court lifted a lower court judge’s order that had vacated the government’s termination of various research-related grants.
Several justices wrote separate opinions in the divided case, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court’s three Democratic appointees, who said they wanted to fully deny the government’s emergency application. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was in the middle of the court, only partially agreeing with the administration, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted to fully side with the administration.
Barrett noted that a majority of the court believes the district court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to grant terminations, which she said belong in a different specialized court, the Court of Federal Claims. But she added that the administration isn’t entitled to emergency relief when it comes to the district court’s ruling against guidance documents on the government policy.
“Of course, it [the government] remains free to challenge the District Court’s vacatur of the guidance before the First Circuit,” the Trump appointee wrote, referring to the continuing lower court litigation in the case that could reach the justices again in the future.
The administration went to the justices after a federal appeals court declined to halt the district judge’s ruling against the grant terminations. U.S. District Judge William Young had observed that President Donald Trump’s executive action didn’t “even attempt to define DEI, but instead set it up as some sort of boogeyman.” The Reagan appointee in Massachusetts wrote that without such a definition, the government had “embarked on a fool’s errand resulting in arbitrary and capricious action.”
Applying to the high court for emergency relief, Trump Solicitor General John Sauer cast the lower court loss as the latest instance of out-of-control judges around the country who have required his office to seek relief from the justices in Washington, D.C.
“This application presents a particularly clear case for this Court to intervene and stop errant district courts from continuing to disregard this Court’s rulings,” Sauer wrote in his application, citing recent administration wins on executive power. He also cited the Supreme Court’s 5-4 shadow docket ruling in April, in Department of Education v. California, in which the court sided with the administration in a case over DEI-related education grants. Sauer said the same result was warranted here.
Opposing his application, a group of plaintiff states accused the government of “spin[ning] a tale” of lower court defiance that “bears little resemblance to reality.” They called the judge’s ruling “run of the mill” and said “[t]he only unlawful decisions here are the federal government’s,” adding that “the only urgency is that manufactured by NIH in its haste to implement its unprecedented and unreasoned policies.” A separate opposition filing from the American Public Health Association and other groups told the justices that even temporary relief for the government would invalidate important health projects that were already paid for by Congress, “inflicting incalculable losses in public health and human life because of delays in bringing the fruits of Plaintiffs’ research to Americans who desperately await clinical advancements.” An amicus brief from nonprofit biological and biomedical societies highlighted what they called “the irreparable injuries already rippling across the scientific community due to the mass termination of NIH grants — particularly those at issue here.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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