\n<\/p>\n
A class action suit led <\/span>by <\/strong>researchers in the University of California system spurred the ruling.<\/span><\/p>\n Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images | US District Court for the Northern District of California<\/p>\n The National Science Foundation restored grants it recently suspended for researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, following a court order late Tuesday, a spokesperson for the agency said.<\/p>\n The NSF and UCLA didn\u2019t tell Inside Higher Ed <\/em>how much funding had been restored, but the Los Angeles Times<\/em> reported it\u2019s roughly $81\u00a0million.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a blow to the Trump administration, which had multiple agencies cut off more than $500\u00a0million in research funds to UCLA earlier this month and, according to the UC system, demanded a $1\u00a0billion settlement payment.<\/p>\n UCLA is the latest target of the Trump administration\u2019s use of mass federal research grant suspensions to pressure prominent universities to change policies and pay restitution, ranging from tens of millions of dollars for Brown University to the billion-dollar demand of UCLA. Federal agencies justify cutting off grants by accusing targeted institutions of failing to address pro-Palestine protesters\u2019 alleged antisemitism, and accusing universities of other transgressions, such as letting transgender women compete in women\u2019s sports or promoting racial preferences. <\/p>\n But this is the first known court order blocking one of those blanket funding freezes. Harvard University also challenged the administration\u2019s decision to suspend more than $2.7\u00a0billion in funds, but a judge has a yet to rule in that case.<\/p>\n UCLA didn\u2019t sue, though.<\/p>\n Instead, the ruling came from a lawsuit that UC researchers filed in early June against President Trump, the NSF and other federal agencies and officials that challenged previous NSF grant terminations. <\/p>\n On June\u00a023, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin, of the Northern District of California, issued a preliminary injunction restoring grants that the administration terminated en masse via form letters that didn\u2019t provide grant-specific explanations for the terminations. When the NSF recently cut off grants again, specifically to UCLA, the researchers\u2019 attorneys alleged the agency violated the preliminary injunction. <\/p>\n Lin agreed, writing in an opinion Tuesday that the new \u201csuspensions have the same effect, and are based on the same type of deficient explanations, as the original terminations.\u201d <\/p>\n The NSF wrote in a July\u00a030 letter justifying the new suspensions that \u201cNSF understands that [UCLA] continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life, as well as failing to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias.\u201d Two days later, the NSF sent a second letter, alleging that UCLA furthermore \u201cengages in racism\u201d and \u201cendangers women by allowing men in women\u2019s sports and private women-only spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Lin, the NSF argued that its recent funding cuts \u201care not within the scope of the preliminary injunction because it suspended, rather than terminated, the grants.\u201d She said the agency argued that suspensions, unlike terminations, \u201ccan be lifted once the grantee takes certain corrective actions.\u201d <\/p>\n However, Lin said the NSF had labeled these \u201csuspensions\u201d as \u201cfinal agency decision[s] not subject to appeal.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere is no listed end date for the suspensions, nor is there any path for researchers to restore funding for their project. If any curative action is actually feasible, it would need to be undertaken by UCLA,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cIn other words, researchers have no guarantee that funding will ever be restored and no way to take action to increase the likelihood of restoration.\u201d <\/p>\n She added that \u201cNSF claims that it could simply turn around the day after the preliminary injunction issued, and halt funding on every grant that had been ordered reinstated, so long as that action was labeled as a \u2018suspension\u2019 rather than a \u2018termination.\u2019 This is not a reasonable interpretation of the scope of the preliminary injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers told the court that as a result of the latest suspensions, \u201cprojects are already losing talented graduate students, staff will soon be laid off, and years of federally funded work will go to waste,\u201d Lin wrote. Researchers also said the defunded projects include \u201cmulti-year research into global heat extremes, a project to address environmental challenges in the Southwestern United States, and another to enhance veteran participation and leadership in STEM fields,\u201d the judge added.<\/p>\n A UC system spokesperson said in an email Wednesday that, \u201cwhile we have not had an opportunity to review the court\u2019s order and were not party to the suit, restoration of National Science Foundation funds is critical to research the University of California performs on behalf of California and the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A class action suit led by researchers in the University of California system spurred the ruling. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images | US District Court for the Northern District of California The National Science Foundation restored grants it recently suspended for researchers at the University of California,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[319,406,675,4694,957,7838,4779,7499],"class_list":{"0":"post-15906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-federal","9":"tag-grants","10":"tag-judge","11":"tag-nsf","12":"tag-orders","13":"tag-reinstate","14":"tag-suspended","15":"tag-ucla"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}