Trump administration agrees to review stalled NIH research grants after lawsuit

The Trump administration on Monday reached a deal with researchers and Democratic-led states who sued over cuts to funding for diversity-related research, agreeing to review grant applications that were stalled or rejected during the legal battle.

A federal judge in Boston previously ruled that the National Institutes of Health unlawfully canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants because of their perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The U.S. Supreme Court in August partially put that decision on hold, ruling that legal battles over the terminated grants should be handled by a different court that specializes in monetary disputes with the government. The Supreme Court left unresolved a second piece of the litigation concerning the NIH’s processing of applications for future funding.

Monday’s agreement resolved part of the battle over the NIH grants, with the government agreeing to conduct new reviews of grant applications that were frozen, denied, or withdrawn after the new policy was announced. The agreement does not require NIH to fund any particular research proposal.

The researchers who sued NIH said Monday that the proposed grants will advance public health issues, including HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s disease, LGBTQ health, and sexual violence.

“This agreement allows my grant application, and many others, to move forward for review after an arbitrary and destructive freeze,” said plaintiff Nikki Maphis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New Mexico who is studying Alzheimer’s disease and alcohol use in the aging brain.

This agreement does not impact U.S. District Judge William Young’s earlier ruling in the case blocking the NIH’s policy of ceasing grant funding for diversity-related research. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has appealed that ruling, and has said it stands by its decision to end funding for research “that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people.”

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Stephen Coates)