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(CN) — A coalition of Democratic attorneys general on Friday initiated yet another legal battle against the Trump administration’s unprecedented federal funding cuts, this time for canceling National Institutes of Health grants that the suing states say were for life-saving medical research.
In the 82-page lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court, the group of 16 states say that the sudden, sweeping cuts are putting in jeopardy decades of progress towards eradicating widespread illnesses.
The states say the Trump administration has “engaged in a concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants.” According to the states, the NIH since March has sent hundreds of letters to grant recipients at state research institutions, announcing the termination of various grants because they “no longer effectuate agency priorities."
“Each boilerplate letter declares that the grant in question has been terminated because of some connection to ‘DEI,’ ‘transgender issues,’ ‘vaccine hesitancy,’ or another topic disfavored by the current administration,” they added.
The states say that the funding cuts will slow research into treatments for diseases like HIV, AIDS, Covid-19, Zika, Alzheimer’s and shingles. They name multiple defendants in their complaint, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a number of NIH subagencies including the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
“Defendants’ destructive efforts have taken the form of across-the-board delays in the review and approval of otherwise-fundable grant applications and widespread terminations of already-issued grants,” the states argue. “Plaintiffs challenge both.”
The states are seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction that would bar the NIH from carrying out the funding cuts and find them unconstitutional.
The terminated grants have already been approved by Congress, the states note. They say NIH “has failed to acknowledge — let alone provide ‘good reasons for’ — any changes in agency policy supposedly justifying the terminations.”
The multistate coalition is comprised of the Democratic attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.
“Once again, the Trump administration is putting politics before public health and risking lives and livelihoods in the process,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is currently embroiled in numerous legal battles against the president, said in a statement Friday.
“Millions of Americans depend on our nation’s research institutions for treatments and cures to the diseases that devastate families every day,” James continued. “The decision to cut these funds is an attack on science, public health, and medical innovation — and I won’t stand for it. We are suing to restore these critical funds because the people of New York, and the entire nation, deserve better.”
The State University of New York has seen $4.5 million in research grants terminated by the NIH, according to the state. That money was going towards projects on Alzheimer’s disease in Asian and Latino Americans, substance-abuse risks and cardiovascular illness in members of the LGBTQ+ community and HIV treatment in Ghana.
The NIH is the largest public funder of medical research in the world. According to Friday’s lawsuit, the organization’s $36 billion in federal awards spurred more than $94 billion in new economic activity that supported more than 400,000 jobs nationwide.
“Indeed, it is hard to find a medical breakthrough in recent years that has not been assisted — whether directly or indirectly — by NIH’s pioneering work,” the states say in the complaint.
Their lawsuit comes just days after more mass layoffs hit the Department of Health and Human Services, the first step towards the administration’s goal of firing 10,000 workers — about a quarter of its total staff — to reduce spending and downsize the federal government. As the Trump administration continues to test the constitutional boundaries of his office, this suit is just one of dozens of complaints filed by Democratic state attorneys general against the federal government.
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