UC researchers ask to block more federal agencies from terminating grants

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge indicated Thursday she would likely extend an existing preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from terminating University of California research grants involving certain blacklisted topics like “diversity” and “equity.”

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said that the six UC researcher plaintiffs were asking for “essentially the same” injunction that she issued on June 23, but with three more agencies: the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation.

“Although there are some differences in the form letters, they all suffer from the same, fundamental sin: they were done through unreasoned, mass terminations through letters that don’t go through the required factors an agency is supposed to follow to make a change in its determination,” the Joe Biden appointee said.

Lin also said she would likely include the NIH, DOD and DOT in the form termination class she provisionally certified in the June 23 order. However, she expressed a bit more skepticism about expanding the equity termination class.

“I’m still working through the issues as to the equity termination class in terms of the NIH and DOD plaintiffs,” she said. “I think the DOT plaintiffs are likely within the equity termination class, but I need to take another look at the record for NIH and DOD.”

Lin did not indicate when she would issue an official ruling but said that it would be out “shortly.”

The six UC researchers sued after losing their multi-year grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation. Their projects addressed issues like wildfire smoke-related health risks in marginalized communities, landfill methane emissions and racial equity in STEM education.

Lin questioned adding NIH and DOD to the equity termination class and asked the plaintiffs why the agencies should be added, given that “no named plaintiff had grant funding terminated by the agencies for researching a forbidden DEI topic.”

Elizabeth Cabraser of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the NIH mass termination letter was the penalty for forbidden DEI research at UCLA. She also argued that the DOD was working “hand-in-hand” with the Department of Government Efficiency and cited executive orders, all with the stated goal of getting rid of DEI.

“The link from DOGE to the Department of Defense, through those executive orders, through the Department of Defense memo, makes it clear these are viewpoint discriminations; they do invoke DEI explicitly,” she said.

In rebuttal, the government said there was no evidence that the suspension of NIH grants was based on the DEI content of any individual grant, and there is no named plaintiff who has standing to assert a First Amendment claim against the DOD.

Government attorney Jason Altabet agreed there were terminations at the DOD based on DEI content, though he specified the plaintiffs were not affected by this. He also clarified that the DOD did keyword searches for selecting grants that were DEI-related, and said the government was working with the plaintiffs to “alleviate the concerns regarding the specifics.”

On June 23, Lin said the federal government’s cancellation of research grants for reasons related to diversity, equity, and inclusion likely violated the First Amendment and granted a preliminary injunction vacating the federal agencies’ terminations of the class members’ grants. She also blocked the agencies from sending future termination letters to class members if those letters are vague, lack clear reasoning or are based on the recipients’ viewpoints.

The judge also provisionally certified two classes of UC researchers: one consisting of researchers who lost their grants due to researching blacklisted diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, topics, and one whose grants were terminated without any specific explanation.

The Ninth Circuit denied the governments request for a partial stay pending appeal of the preliminary injunction.

Lin also addressed the government’s argument that the claims should be heard in the Court of Federal Claims as breach-of-contract claims. The judge said that because the plaintiffs are individual researchers and not the University of California — and therefore not party to the grant contract — they would not be allowed to go to the Court of Federal Claims.

“If I tell plaintiffs they can’t sue here, they can’t sue anywhere,” she said.

Lin went further by calling the government’s interpretation of the plaintiffs’ lack of standing “radical” and raised a hypothetical where a future administration cancelled research grants based on a researcher having an ethnic last name.

“If the government did that, according to its logic, those researchers would not be able to sue anywhere to vindicate their constitutional rights, unless the university sued on their behalf,” she said.

Altabet denied it was radical, adding that there are a variety of doctrines where someone faces a rights violation, but is unable to seek relief.

The plaintiffs said the court already decided the jurisdiction issue in the previous order.

“All of the issues concerning the preliminary injunction we are seeking have already been answered by this court and the Ninth Circuit,” Erwin Chemerinsky, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said.

Attorneys for both parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Separately, a coalition of University of California labor groups is suing the Trump administration, claiming they are using the threat of federal funding cuts to “coerce” the university system into implementing ideological policies that infringe on the free speech and academic freedom of UC faculty, students and staff.

Follow @mhattridge_