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The ACLU, the ACLU of Northern California, Protect Democracy, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Jacobson Lawyers Group PLLC filed class action litigation challenging NIH鈥檚 policy of blocking or altering grants in order to silence views it disagrees with on issues ranging from DEI to gender identity. The lawsuit alleges that NIH, the world鈥檚 largest public funder of biomedical research, is unconstitutionally censoring research and allowing political ideology to override scientific expertise in determining which projects receive federal funding, contrary to congressional mandates.

This case brings claims under the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. The lawsuit contends that NIH鈥檚 current viewpoint-based policies violate the First Amendment, which prohibits NIH from screening out projects or applicants because it thinks they鈥檒l express views the government does not like. In addition, NIH is violating statutes designed to ensure federal public health grants are awarded based on scientific merit, not politics, and regulations limiting when the government can terminate grants.

NIH is using a troubling list of 235 keywords as proxies to identify grants, applications or researchers likely to express or support perspectives this administration does not like. The forbidden terms include 鈥渆quity,鈥� 鈥渁dvancing diversity,鈥� 鈥渞acist,鈥� 鈥済ender,鈥� 鈥淟atinx,鈥� 鈥渃limate change,鈥� and 鈥減regnant individual,鈥� among others. Some grants and applications including these terms are summarily terminated or denied, while NIH has sought to renegotiate others, requiring researchers to scrub their grant materials of flagged words. If the researcher refuses, NIH terminates the grant or stops the application from advancing.

The screening is applied after awards and new funding applications have passed through multiple rounds of scientific peer review and been approved by the NIH officials identified by Congress as the proper decisionmakers. This additional layer of ideological review is a departure from the NIH鈥檚 longstanding approach and contrary to congressional mandates designed to prevent the politicization of the NIH award process.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit seeks class-wide relief for all researchers whose grants were unjustifiably terminated pursuant to these viewpoint-based policies and have not been reinstated. It also seeks class-wide relief for all researchers currently being impacted by the unlawful, viewpoint-based policies that would lead to additional terminations, forced renegotiations, delays, or application denials.