UC researchers ask judge to halt Trump termination of federal grants

(CN) — A group of University of California researches on Friday asked a judge to block the Trump administration from terminating already-approved research grants and restore the grants that have canceled per the president’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, “gender ideology” and purported wasteful government spending.

U.S. District Rita Lin didn’t rule on the academics’ request for a temporary restraining during the hearing in San Francisco. The Joe Biden appointee said she will issue a written decision as soon as early next week.

However, the judge’s comments at the start of the hearing indicated that she took a dim view of the administration’s cancelation in recent months of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants for multiyear projects at UC.

“I have to say that I’m quite troubled by the information I see in the record,” Lin said. “It looks to me, from the record, like the administration has terminated grants on a massive scale without reasoned consideration.”

She noted that grants had been flagged for review based in keywords such as “diversity” or “equity” in their title and that federal agencies have issued form letters without any explanation at all for canceling a grant other than that there has been a change in the agency’s priorities.

“It seems totally arbitrary,” Lin said. “The Administrative Procedure Act, as you well know, requires a reasoned explanation when an agency changes its priority and changes its mind about a particular grant.”

And aside from the apparently blatant violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulate how federal agencies function, the wholesale cancelations of research grants because it touches on blacklisted topics was likely a violation of the First Amendment, the judge observed.

Trump’s executive orders, she said, appear to be targeting and penalizing forbidden ideas across the board to “drive them out of the marketplace of ideas.”

The lawsuit by the UC researches is among a host of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive orders, often resulting temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions.

Just this week, in a lawsuit brought by a group of state attorneys general, a federal judge in Boston struck down the National Institutes of Health’s directives that led to the cancellation of hundreds of research grants. The judge found that NIH’s actions targeting research involving disfavored topics and populations were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious and therefore void.

The plaintiffs, who also included health and civil rights organizations, argued that the funding cuts would hinder research into critical treatments for diseases like HIV, AIDS, COVID-19, Zika, Alzheimer’s and shingles.

The UC system, with 10 campuses, three affiliate national laboratories and dozens of institutes, centers and research laboratories across California, has been at forefront of scientific and technology developments for decades in large part because of federal funding, the researchers argue.

“For years, the UC system has partnered with the federal government to deliver groundbreaking innovations that have made the American public healthier, safer, smarter, and better able to compete in a global market,” they say in their request for a temporary restraining order. “Federal funding is the single most important source of UC research funding, historically accounting for more than half of the UC system’s total research awards.”

In fiscal year 2024, the UC system received $4.069 billion in federal research awards.

Jason Altabet, a lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department, argued at the hearing that the individual researches lack standing to sue the government because they aren’t parties to the contracts they seek to enforce. In addition, according to the attorney, the case should be litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than a U.S. district court, because it pertains to a contract with the federal government.

“It’s the institution that is submitting the grant application, the grant agreement, and therefore the subject matter of the grant belong to the University of California,” Altabet said with respect to plaintiffs’ First Amendment argument that their work is singled out because of its subject matter.

“What plaintiffs have to show, for example in the First Amendment context, is that they have some sort of positive law interest in the funding that would then allow them to assert their own rights,” the attorney said. “Because otherwise […] they are asserting the rights of the University of California.”

Follow @edpettersson