A major early victory this week in California stands out among a flurry of cases in which states and universities are battling the Trump administration over cutting research funding.
In order to prevent the cancellation of their sometimes relatively small but unique federally funded studies—which included examining racial equity in education, evaluating the role of Greek Orthodox Christians in Istanbul during the 19th century, and assessing the health risks to racial minorities exposed to wildfire smoke—six different UC arts, science, and medical researchers united.
In the absence of strong institutional legal support, they sought assistance from two of their UC Berkeley colleagues to personally present their case: Claudia Polsky, a former California deputy attorney general who is now a professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school’s dean and a constitutional law expert.
The outcome?
In addition to directing the Trump administration to return millions of dollars in UC funds, a federal court has indicated that the case may move on as a class-action lawsuit, making it available to UC researchers throughout the state.
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Neeta Thakur, a physician and associate professor at UC San Francisco, described the judge’s ruling as encouraging. Thakur’s $1.3 million grant to investigate the effects of wildfire smoke on millions of California ER patients was canceled in April, leaving $700,000 to spend. Knowing that this was a positive step, Thakur, whose research was supported by the Environmental Protection Agency, expressed cautious optimism. As the case progresses, we will see how it develops.
Based in San Francisco In orders issued late Monday, Judge Rita F. Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California declared that the federal government’s decision to withdraw funds this year to academics at UC Berkeley and Thakur’s school constituted paradigmatic viewpoint discrimination.
The researchers sued the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and Lin ordered a preliminary injunction to prevent the Trump administration from stopping grants to them.
The judge also ruled that the government must return almost all grants from the three agencies to researchers at any campus of the University of California that had their funding revoked following Trump’s inauguration if projects were flagged for diversity-related topics or terminated via form letters that lacked specific justifications for funding halts. This is because she approved a class-action lawsuit.
California
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The number of grants and the total amount covered by the lawsuit are unknown.
The National Institutes of Health provided $2.6 billion of the more than $4 billion in federal funding that UC received last year. With about $524 million, the National Science Foundation was the second largest federal source. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the EPA provided awards totaling millions of dollars.
A large number of cancellations occurred this year using keyword searches associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, or were trimmed via generic agency letters, according to Trump administration documents in the case and other cases.
According to Lin’s order, the record shows that the contested grant terminations were probably carried out in bulk, without personalized examination, and without giving grantees a rational justification for the terminations.
If other researchers join the lawsuit, the judge stated that she would be willing to broaden the class to include grantees from other government departments and agencies.
California
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When contacted on Tuesday, an EPA representative stated that the agency was examining the decision, while a National Science Foundation representative declined to comment. The National Endowment for the Humanities did not respond to a request.
In an email, Chemerinsky, who presented the case during a hearing on Friday, stated that the judge’s ruling provided a thorough and unambiguous justification for why the University of California researchers’ arbitrary funding termination was illegal and against federal law.
In order to broaden the scope of the class action to include more UC faculty, Polsky, the director of the UC Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic who led the lawsuit, stated that she anticipated attorneys will file documents addressing grant reductions by other organizations.
According to Polsky, it won’t be difficult for us to fulfill the requirements needed to extend this to numerous agencies. The plaintiffs will have no trouble presenting proof that many agencies illegally discontinued UC grants.
The judge instructed federal attorneys to provide the court with a report by June 30 attesting to the completion of all necessary actions to comply with the preliminary injunction, or if that has not happened, providing a justification for its impracticability and a summary of the actions taken so far.
The lawsuit is among the handful to originate directly from researchers, but it is one of several brought against the Trump administration over grant terminations.
In court documents and throughout the hearing, the Trump administration claimed that the matter was in the incorrect court and ought to have been heard at the Court of Federal Claims. The professors received the funding through UC, which he claimed was a third party that transferred the money to the academics, therefore according to Justice Department attorney Jason Altabet, the professors lacked standing to suit.
These arguments did not convince Lin.
According to her, it’s difficult to fathom who would be more impacted by project terminations than the researchers who submitted grant applications and are now carrying out their studies.
Chemerinsky, an expert in constitutional law and the First Amendment, also argued against the government’s stance.
He stated in court on Friday that the grants are beneficial to the researchers, as the Supreme Court has often stated that economic standing is necessary.
The researchers are also represented by Farella Braun and Martel and the San Francisco law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein, in addition to Chemerinsky and Polsky.
Federal courts are still considering additional challenges to Trump’s funding cuts, such as a multistate lawsuit filed by California and other blue states against the National Institutes of Health’s award reductions.
Although it wasn’t a part of the case Lin is managing, UC has joined or filed in support of a number of other lawsuits against Trump’s cuts, including those against the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Education Department.
Everyone has profited from the favorable effects of the federal government’s solid collaboration with American institutions thanks to our ground-breaking research. In a statement, Rachel Zaentz, Senior Director of Strategic and Critical Communications at UC, said. We are analyzing the court’s decision, and the University of California was not a party to the lawsuit. In addition, the UC system is actively involved in a number of political and legal initiatives to reinstate financing for critical research initiatives in the social sciences, humanities, and STEM domains.
