\n<\/p>\n
Researchers will have to challenge grant terminations in federal claims court.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | SDI Productions\/E+\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Hope is fading that federally funded researchers whose grants were terminated by the National Institutes of Health earlier this year will be able to resume their work as planned. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that any legal challenges to the grant terminations should be litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, not the federal district court system they\u2019ve been moving through for months. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the latest twist in federally funded researchers\u2019 legal fight to claw back nearly $800\u00a0million in medical research grants\u2014though accounting for the multiyear grants that the NIH is refusing to fulfill puts that figure closer to $2\u00a0billion\u2014the NIH terminated for running afoul of the Trump administration\u2019s ideological priorities. Many of the grants funded programs that advanced diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and research projects focused on topics such as LGBTQ+ health, vaccine hesitancy and racial disparities.<\/p>\n
Researchers sued the NIH in April and got a win in June when a federal district court judge in Massachusetts ordered the agency to reinstate the grants immediately. Although the NIH has since reinstated many of those grants, Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist at Harvard University and former lawyer who\u2019s been tracking grant cancellations, told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that after Thursday\u2019s ruling those reinstated grants will \u201calmost certainly\u201d be re-terminated. If that happens, \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019ll get their money back.\u201d <\/p>\n That\u2019s in part because the Supreme Court said researchers will have to re-file their lawsuits in federal claims court, which generally doesn\u2019t have the power to issue injunctive relief that could keep grant money flowing during the litigation process. And it could take months or even years for the claims court to decide if researchers are owed damages. <\/p>\n \u201cNobody has that kind of time. The nature of research is that you can\u2019t just stop and restart it many months later,\u201d said Delaney. \u201cFolks have already had to do that once and many aren\u2019t able to\u2014they\u2019ve had to lay off staff and lost contact with study participants. This additional delay probably renders the research unviable going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Delaney is among numerous experts and advocates who say the decision is both a blow to the scientific research enterprise and the latest evidence that the Supreme Court is inclined to interpret the law to favor the Trump administration\u2019s whims. <\/p>\n \u201cMake no mistake: This was a decision critical to the future of the nation, and the Supreme Court made the wrong choice,\u201d the Association of American Medical Colleges said in a statement. \u201cHistory will look upon these mass NIH research grant terminations with shame. The Court has turned a blind eye to this grievous attack on science and medicine, and we call upon Congress to take action to restore the rule of law at NIH.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeremy Berg, who served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 2003 to 2011, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that while \u201cmany (but not all) grants from the lawsuits that had been terminated have been reinstated at this point,\u201d the big question the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling raises now \u201cis whether NIH will start to re-terminate them.\u201d<\/p>\n Although a 5-4 majority did agree on Thursday that the district can review NIH\u2019s reasoning for the terminations and kept in place a court order blocking the guidance that prompted the cancellations, Berg said the mixed ruling is \u201cpotentially very damaging\u201d because redirecting the case to a different court means \u201cthe stay blocking the required reinstatements could go into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s dissent sums up his interpretation of the ruling\u2019s implications. \u201cThis is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,\u201d Jackson wrote. \u201cCalvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: That one, and this Administration always wins.”<\/p>\n That\u2019s how Samuel Bagenstos, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Michigan and former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services, interpreted the decision, too. <\/p>\n \u201cThe message the courts sent yesterday is very strong that they are going to let the Trump administration shut down the grants right now and remit grantees to the really uncertain process of going to the Court of Federal Claims and potentially getting damages in the future,\u201d he said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed<\/em> Friday. <\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s really cold comfort for the grantees,\u201d Bagenstos added. \u201cIf they can\u2019t get the grants restarted right now, they probably can\u2019t continue their research projects, and the prospect of maybe getting damages in the future doesn\u2019t keep those research projects alive. It\u2019s a bad sign for the entire research community.\u201d<\/p>\n The NIH is far from the only federal agency that has canceled federal research grants that don\u2019t align with the Trump administration\u2019s ideologies. The National Science Foundation, the Education Department and the National Endowment for the Humanities are all facing legal challenges in federal district courts after freezing or canceling grants. <\/p>\n And the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling on the NIH\u2019s terminations has implications for those cases, as well. <\/p>\n \u201cThe message seems to be pretty clear that if you have an ongoing grant that\u2019s been terminated and you want to go to court to keep the money flowing, you\u2019re out of luck,\u201d Bagenstos said. \u201cIt\u2019s got very bleak implications for all researchers who are depending on continuing the flow of federal grants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers will have to challenge grant terminations in federal claims court. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | SDI Productions\/E+\/Getty Images Hope is fading that federally funded researchers whose grants were terminated by the National Institutes of Health earlier this year will be able to resume their work as planned. On Thursday, the United<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4813,10847,5265,571,4057],"class_list":{"0":"post-17865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-bleak","9":"tag-implications","10":"tag-researchers","11":"tag-ruling","12":"tag-scotus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17865","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=17865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Trump \u2018Always Wins\u2019 <\/h2>\n