By Vanguard Staff
SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday denied the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court order requiring the reinstatement of federal research grants that had been terminated earlier this year as part of a sweeping campaign to eliminate funding tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The case, Thakur v. Trump, was filed by a group of University of California researchers whose multi-year grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) were abruptly cancelled in April. The agencies sent form letters citing changes in priorities and referencing recent executive orders issued by President Trump in January and February 2025. Those orders, which created the Department of Government Efficiency, directed agencies to end projects related to DEI, environmental justice, and similar initiatives.
The plaintiffs alleged the cancellations were unlawful because they were not based on any individualized review of the projects, but instead reflected broad policy directives. They sued in the Northern District of California, arguing the actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the First and Fifth Amendments, and separation of powers. In June, the district court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the reinstatement of the grants and provisionally certified two classes of researchers: one for those who received form termination letters with no individualized reasoning and another for those whose grants were ended under the DEI-related orders.
The government appealed and sought a partial stay of the injunction, limited to grants issued by the EPA and NEH. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, led by Judge Morgan Christen, rejected the request. “We deny the government’s motion,” Christen wrote in the opinion.
The panel found that the government had not shown it was likely to succeed on the merits of its arguments. The court said the termination letters were vague, citing broad rationales such as failure to “serve the best interests of the United States” or inconsistency with agency priorities, without specifying how they applied to particular projects. “The recipients of the form letter and the public were left to guess at the reasons for these terminations,” the court noted.
The opinion highlighted the case of Dr. Neeta Thakur, whose $1.3 million EPA grant to study the impact of wildfire smoke on California communities was terminated seven months before its scheduled end. The court said the government provided no evidence that the EPA considered reliance interests or the taxpayer investments that would be lost if the project was not completed.
On the First Amendment claim, the panel concluded that the government likely engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by targeting projects associated with DEI, environmental justice, and gender-related research. The court rejected the government’s argument that it was simply choosing not to fund certain activities, distinguishing the case from earlier Supreme Court decisions. Instead, the judges found that the administration “selected grants for termination based on viewpoint” and reinforced the principle that, while the government has discretion in allocating subsidies, it cannot suppress disfavored ideas.
The court also rejected the government’s claim that it would suffer irreparable harm by being compelled to disburse funds that it might not later recover. While acknowledging that some funds might not be recouped, the judges found the harms to researchers and the public were more significant. They cited layoffs, disruptions to graduate programs, reputational injury, and the destruction of research projects, along with the waste of taxpayer dollars already invested.
“The government cannot suffer harm from an injunction that merely ends an unlawful practice,” the panel wrote, citing its precedent in Rodriguez v. Robbins.
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling leaves intact the district court’s order requiring the reinstatement of the cancelled grants while the case proceeds. The broader litigation will continue to determine whether the Trump administration’s executive orders and resulting grant terminations violated constitutional and statutory limits.
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