WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court said Thursday that the Trump administration could cancel hundreds of medical research grants that relate to diversity, equity and inclusion or gender identity.
The judges provided emergency call from President Trump's lawyers and overturned a Boston judge's ruling that blocked the cancellation of $783 million in research grants.
The judges were divided 5-4. Chief Justice John J. Roberts Jr. joined three liberals in dissent and said the district judge had not exceeded his authority.
The court's conservative majority has repeatedly sided with the administration and against federal judges in disputes over spending and staffing of federal agencies.
In the latter case, most agreed that Trump and his appointees could decide how to spend health research funds allocated by Congress.
When Trump took office in January, he issued an executive order “ending sweeping and wasteful government DEI programs and incentives.”
A few weeks later, the acting director of the National Institutes of Health said the agency would no longer fund “low-value and mission-unrelated research programs, including but not limited to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and gender identity research.”
More than 1,700 grants have been cancelled.
Trump's lawyers told the court that the NIH had stopped grants to study “Buddhism and HIV stigma in Thailand”; “intersecting, layered, and multidimensional structural racism among Anglo and Hispanic populations”; and “anti-racist healing in nature to protect the telomeres of adolescence” BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] for health equity.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his colleagues from 15 Democratic-led states sued to stop what they called “an unprecedented disruption of ongoing research.” They were joined by groups of researchers and public health advocates.
State prosecutors said their public universities use grant money for “projects researching heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, alcohol and substance abuse, mental health issues and countless other diseases.”
They said the NIH has stopped a grant for a University of California study examining how inflammation, insulin resistance and physical activity affect Alzheimer's disease in black women, a group with higher rates and a more aggressive disease profile.
It also stopped a University of Hawaii study that sought to identify genetic and biological risk factors for colorectal cancer among Native Hawaiians, a population with elevated rates of incidence and mortality from the disease, they said.
In June, Democratic state prosecutors won a ruling by U.S. District Judge William J. YoungReagan appointee. He said the sudden halt to research grants was a violation of federal procedural law because it was “arbitrary” and poorly explained.
He said Trump has required agencies to “focus on eradicating what he calls diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”), the undefined enemy.” He said he tried but was unable to get a clear definition of DEI and what it entails.
When the 1st Circuit refused to overturn the judge's ruling, Trump's attorney general, John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court at the end of July.
He noted that in April the judges overturned a similar decision by a Boston judge who blocked the new administration's cancellation of education grants.
The attorney general said Trump's order overturned President Biden's 2021 executive order, which mandated an “ambitious agenda for whole-of-government equity” and directed federal agencies to “dedicate resources to address the historic failure to invest sufficiently, fairly and equally in low-income communities.”
He said the new administration has determined that these DEI-related grants “do not advance our knowledge of living systems, provide little return on investment, and ultimately do not improve health, prolong life, or reduce disease.”
