The case involving the canceled grant proceeded relatively quickly. By June, a District Court judge declared that the federal policy “represents racial discrimination” and issued a preliminary order under which all canceled grants would be reinstated. In his written opinion, Judge William Young said that the government issued its directive to block DEI support without even bothering to define DEI, making the entire policy arbitrary and capricious and thus violating the Administrative Procedure Act. He rescinded the policy and ordered funding restored.
Their decision ultimately ended up before the Supreme Court, which issued a decision in which the divided majority agreed on only one issue: that Judge Young’s District Court was the wrong place to resolve government-provided funding issues. Thus, recovery of money from the canceled grant will have to be handled through a separate case filed in a different court.
However, critically, it left intact the second part of the decision. Young’s determination that the government is anti-DEI, anti-climate, etc. The policy was illegal and thus the void was upheld.
Restoring reviews
This would have considerable consequences for the second part of the initial lawsuit, which involves grants that had not yet been funded and were blocked from any consideration by Trump administration policy. With that policy repealed, there was no longer any justification for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fail to consider grants when they were submitted. But, in the meantime, the deadline had passed, much of the money had been spent, and in some cases people who had submitted grants had fallen out of the “new investigator” category under which they were applying.
The proposed agreement essentially resets the clock on all this; Blocked grants will be evaluated for funding as if it were still the beginning of 2025. It states, “Defendants stipulate and agree that the end of federal fiscal year 2025 does not prevent Defendants from considering and/or awarding any applications.” Even if the funding opportunity notice is withdrawn, grant applications will still be sent for peer review.
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