The main visitor entrance to the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
SAN FRANCISCO — A collection of so-called public health researchers have gone to federal court to stop the Trump administration from cutting off their research projects intended to advance left-wing culture and public policy goals, including advancing gender transition medicine, combatting "societal injustice" and exploring the effects of so-called climate change on public health.
On Sept. 16, attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, of New York and San Francisco, filed suit in San Francisco federal court against the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The lawsuit was filed as a class action on behalf of all researchers who assert the NIH and HHS under President Donald Trump have illegally cut off funding for their projects in the name of addressing concerns over the use of principles of "diversity, equity and inclusion" (DEI) by prior presidential administrations in doling out federal grants and other funding for public health research.
Since the first days of Trump's second term in office in 2025, his administration has taken aim at policies and programs that have advanced such DEI principles. The Trump administration has consistently argued that DEI is merely a repackaged method of advancing left-wing policies, including those that intentionally and explicitly designed to illegally discriminate on behalf of people who are not white or male, or who are not LGBTQ.
Under executive orders and agency directives, the Trump administration particularly sought to cut funding for programs or other initiatives they believed were improperly selected for funding by the administration of former President Biden or other government agencies using DEI principles, or which advanced goals or objectives intended to advance the goals associated with DEI.
In their new lawsuit, the researchers assert the anti-DEI funding "purge," however, was actually used to improperly strip funding for projects the administration ideologically opposed "to abruptly terminate thousands of projects perceived or expected to communicate viewpoints disfavored by the Administration>
The researchers and their ACLU lawyers say they "recognize that the government may set funding priorities and decide among competing proposals..."
But they argue the Trump administration doesn't have the authority to to cut off funding that has already been allocated or use "ideological litmus tests" to determine how the funding should be distributed, allegedly in violation of the First Amendment.
"What the First Amendment does not allow is the government’s use of its funding power to target or silence the expression of disfavored viewpoints within the biomedical research community," the lawsuit said. "Nor may NIH ... contradict Congressional mandates designed to prevent the politicization of the NIH award process, ignore regulations limiting the circumstances in which termination is allowed, or impose arbitrary and capricious grant-screening mechanisms without explanation or even public disclosure."
The researchers and ACLU noted the Trump administration, through its Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), specifically took aim at cutting funding from projects exploring gender identity and methods of advancing gender transitions, such as research into "treatment for voice-masculinization, and 'Understanding the effects of cross-sex hormone therapy on vaginal mucosal immunity,' which sought to determine whether gender-affirming hormone therapy might contribute to transgender individuals’ disproportionate acquisition of HIV;"
Projects to explore the alleged impacts of societal racism on public health;
Projects focusing on "the 'effects of carbon emissions and climate change on human behavior;'”
And projects designed to "fight misinformation and disinformation" related to Covid and vaccine hesitancy, particularly "in rural communities."
The lawsuit also seeks to protect funding for projects designed to explore the alleged benefits of so-called "gender affirming care" for "transgender youths."
They accuse the NIH under Trump of instead indicating that the NIH would instead fund “'research that aims to identify and treat the harms' caused by 'puberty suppression, hormone therapy or surgical intervention.'"
The lawsuit asserted the anti-DEI DOGE cuts also wrongly swept up large numbers of other research initiatives, which they say included research related to cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.
The Trump administration has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.
