The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with slashing nearly $800 million in federal research funding tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, dealing a significant blow to public health advocates and Democratic-led states.
In a narrow 5–4 ruling issued Thursday, the justices overturned a lower-court order that had blocked $783 million in grant cancellations by the National Institutes of Health. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent. At the same time, Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority only in part, ensuring that the administration’s new anti-DEI rules for future grants remain on hold.
The decision is the latest judicial victory for President Donald Trump, who has sought to dismantle programs associated with DEI across federal agencies. The administration argues that funding choices should not be “subject to judicial second-guessing” and claims DEI-driven research can “conceal insidious racial discrimination.”
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Public health advocates and 16 Democratic attorneys general contend the cuts will cause “incalculable losses in public health and human life,” undermining years of progress in medical research. They also say cancelling projects midstream disrupts careers, wastes existing data, and blocks the possibility of scientific breakthroughs.
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Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing separately, chastised lower courts for resisting earlier Supreme Court directives. “All these interventions should have been unnecessary,” he wrote. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that challenges to the funding cuts should be heard in federal claims court, not by district judges, a position the conservative majority endorsed.
The legal battle concerns only part of an estimated $12 billion in research Trump has targeted. In June, U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, had called the cancellations discriminatory. “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said in court, later adding: “Have we no shame.” An appeals court upheld his ruling before Thursday’s Supreme Court reversal.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a scathing dissent, warning that the majority’s willingness to repeatedly side with the administration undermines judicial integrity. “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” she wrote, invoking the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
With the ruling, the administration can resume canceling hundreds of grants while litigation continues, leaving the fate of critical medical studies and billions more in potential cuts uncertain.
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