Researchers today asked a federal court to find that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is acting illegally in barring grants on topics disliked by President Donald Trump’s administration. NIH, which screens grants for sensitive terms and requires changes in how projects are described, is violating the Constitution’s First Amendment protections of free speech and rules requiring that grants be awarded based on scientific merit, the class action suit contends.

The complaint was filed in a San Francisco federal district court that last year ruled in favor of similar claims about federal grant terminations, and some legal experts critical of the Trump administration say it could succeed. The case is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed after Trump officials in early 2025 began to cancel thousands of grants touching on DEI, climate change, vaccine hesitancy, and other topics at NIH and other agencies.

In June 2025, a federal judge in Boston found the NIH cuts in particular were “arbitrary and capricious” in a ruling that led to the restoration of about 800 grants. That only ruling applied to a portion of the 1700 or more NIH grants canceled, however.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-file-first-amendment-challenge-nih-grant-screening

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