The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration on Thursday to enact millions in research funding cuts in its anti-DEI initiative.
In a 5-4 decision, the court lifted an order blocking $783 million in cuts enacted by the National Institutes of Health.
Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent, while the conservative wing approved the decision. The court blocked the Trump administration’s anti-DEI guidance on future funding with a vote from Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The Supreme Court win for the Trump administration bolsters their mission to cut government spending across the capital. Opponents of the administration’s cuts to public health argue they will cause “incalculable losses in public health and human life.”
Trump’s Justice Department maintains that the administration should be able to control funding decisions. They said funding shouldn’t be “subject to judicial second-guessing” and efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion “conceal insidious racial discrimination.”
The NIH began terminating federal grants in February behind Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had instructed a reevaluation of all grant funding or supporting “DEI and gender identity research activities and programs.”
Sixteen states, advocacy organizations, and researchers sued the NIH and Kennedy, noting that eliminating the research was unconstitutional. They argued that halting funding for research midway through studies harms data already collected and limits the country’s capacity for scientific breakthroughs.
This specific lawsuit addresses just part of the estimated $12 billion cuts. In its emergency appeal, the Trump administration referenced several other times judges have blocked funding cuts.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said judges shouldn’t consider those cases and that they should go to the federal claims court. He cited a previous Supreme Court decision that helped the administration enact cuts to teacher-training programs.
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest liberal justice, dissenting from the Supreme Court, slammed the administration and her colleagues and observed that the administration “always wins.”
“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” she said, referring to the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.