A written ruling details why a judge restored funding for many NIH grants.

In mid-June, a federal judge issued a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration, declaring that its decision to cancel the funding for many grants issued by the National Institutes of Health was illegal, and suggesting that the policy was likely animated by racism. But the detailed reasoning behind his decision wasn’t released at the time. The written portion of the decision was finally issued on Wednesday, and it has a number of notable features.

For starters, it’s more limited in scope due to a pair of Supreme Court decisions that were issued in the intervening weeks. As a consequence, far fewer grants will see their funding restored. Regardless, the court continues to find that the government’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, in part because the government never bothered to define the problems that would get a grant canceled. As a result, officials within the NIH simply canceled lists of grants they received from DOGE without bothering to examine their scientific merit, and then struggled to retroactively describe a policy that justified the actions afterward—a process that led several of them to resign.

A more limited verdict

The issue before Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts was whether the government had followed the law in terminating grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. After a short trial, Young issued a verbal ruling that the government hadn’t, and that he had concluded that its actions were the product of “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ. community.” But the details of his decisions and the evidence that motivated them had to wait for a written ruling, which is now available.

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  • HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world
    4·
    27 days ago

    It annoys me people that want to get rid of all DEI without understanding everything it encompasses. Learning to not discriminate based on unconscious bias? DEI./ SEL Self awareness

    Teaching children other people live and feel different then they do, to be respectful of other peoples feeling and not be a narcissist asshole? DEI/ SEL Social Awareness

    So ban DEI broadly and we cancel inclustivity training to reduce discrimination, does that mean we cant teach children about any person or culture outside of a narrow range?

    A student (preschool) had laughed at another students glasses once, so we took some extra time to talk about feelings and differences, reading a book about how people look different (glasses, freckles, some other stuff) and we made an extra effort to wear our reading glasses for a while. but thats inclusion, can we not teach students to be aware and respectful, not laugh at others?