By Bianca Licitra
On November 19, eight higher education associations, co-led by AAU and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals urging it to uphold a lower court’s ruling reinstating hundreds of terminated National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants.
The grants were terminated earlier this year after the administration identified links to diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender identity; and other topics that did not meet “agency priorities.” In June, a federal judge in Massachusetts granted preliminary relief and ruled that the terminations were illegal, ordering the funds to be reinstated. The administration appealed this decision to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
When the 1st Circuit denied the government’s request to stay the order, the administration made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which issued a 5-4 decision to partially grant and partially deny the stay application. The case is now back in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The new amicus brief argues that the recent cuts demonstrate a stark departure from decades of NIH procedure surrounding grant awards and terminations. “Consistent with its congressional mandate, NIH’s efforts are driven by scientific methodology and the health needs of the nation. That includes the processes by which NIH awards, administers, and, if necessary, terminates grants,” the brief says. It emphasizes how important such stability is to the grantmaking process and to the broader goal of scientific progress.
Ultimately, the brief argues, the administration’s actions threaten the longstanding collaborative relationship between the federal government and research institutions. “[F]ar more is at stake than lost funding,” it notes, adding: “Grant terminations en masse, for reasons wholly unconnected to science, threaten to destabilize the entire system and, with it, the future health of the nation.”
In addition to lost funding, the associations contend, the NIH grant terminations and the precedent set by such an action are a major threat to the future of the American scientific enterprise. The impact is already reaching researchers and academic institutions, as well as students, medical facilities, and the American public.
“It is not an overdramatization to say that, if any future administration may simply terminate NIH grants midstream based on whether the grant titles sound like research it believes should continue, scientific progress will be set back decades, delaying or preventing entirely discoveries that would have improved the health of the American public,” the associations assert. The brief concludes that the appropriate remedy for the termination of NIH grants is not monetary damages, and that the Court of Federal Claims is the wrong venue for remediation. “Research cannot simply be revived by an infusion of funds: researchers and staff have been terminated, clinical trials have been stopped, and critical infrastructure projects have been put on hold,” it says. Instead, the associations argue, “the district court’s judgment should be affirmed.”
AAU had previously joined AAMC and the other associations in submitting amicus briefs to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Supreme Court. The relevant cases are American Public Health Association, et al. v. National Institutes of Health, et al. and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., et al.
Bianca Licitra is editorial and communications assistant at AAU.