Blasting ‘district court defiance,’ Trump pushes SCOTUS to gut $800 million in health grants

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to freeze $783 million in grants for health research on Thursday, bemoaning “inferior courts” that ruled to reinstate the funds.

Health science funding tied to diversity, equity and inclusion or gender ideology was restored by a federal judge who accused the administration of “weaponizing what should not be weaponized” after it slashed grants earlier this year.

Seemingly incensed by the claim, Trump lashed out at the judge for politicizing the judiciary, calling on the Supreme Court to quell “district court defiance.”

“When courts criticize executive-branch officials for ‘their haste to appease the executive’ and dismiss the president’s goal of ‘making America great’ as a ‘guise,’ they impermissibly ‘substitute [their] own policy judgment for that of the agency,’” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote.

Trump claimed that there has been widespread disobedience of the Supreme Court’s April emergency order on Department of Education v. California , which allowed the administration to cut millions in grant funding for teachers. Trump urged the justices to remind their lower court peers that “the Constitution vests the ‘judicial power’ in ‘one supreme court,’ to which all others are ‘inferior courts.’”

“Our judicial system rests on vertical stare decisis , not a lower-court free-for-all where individual district judges feel free to elevate their own policy judgments over those of the executive branch, and their own legal judgments over those of this court,” Sauer wrote.

Similar to the Education Department grants, Trump slashed National Institute of Health grants that did not align with his administration’s policies. In February, the Department of Health and Human Services paused all grants supporting DEI and gender identity.

The administration claimed “amorphous equity objectives” were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry.”

In two separate lawsuits, private plaintiffs, including research and advocacy organizations and 16 states, claimed that the terminations were unlawful.

After a hearing, U.S. District Judge William Young restored the grant funding, noting that he had “never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable.” The Ronald Reagan appointee challenged claims that DEI studies “support unlawful discrimination,” stating that while the Trump administration might take the “valid government position” to scrutinize affirmative action programs, “that’s not a license to discriminate.”

An appeals court refused to block the ruling, stating that although the government might face irreparable harm in paying unrecoverable grants, its underlying action was unlawful.

Trump pushed the Supreme Court to step in, arguing that the terminations fell within the agency’s authority to shape policy.

“Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize — as members of this court have done — that paeans to ‘diversity’ often conceal invidious racial discrimination,” Sauer wrote, citing the court’s decision to gut affirmative action.

The administration argued that researchers and states had to bring their case in the Court of Federal Claims. Under the Tucker Act, contract claims against the government can not be brought in federal district court under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“Given the federal government’s sovereign immunity, federal courts generally lack jurisdiction over ‘suits against the United States absent Congress’s express consent,’” Sauer wrote.

The Supreme Court has endorsed an expansive view of presidential power in recent rulings. In the first six months of Trump’s second term, the administration has submitted dozens of emergency appeals, where the justices granted his requests in nearly every instance.

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