Advocates protest outside the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, in May over agency cuts. In June, a district court ordered hundreds of NIH grant cancellations to be restored in response to an April lawsuit from APHA.
Photo by Bill Clark, courtesy CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
In a major victory for public health — thanks to APHA — a federal judge this summer ruled that hundreds of grant cancellations by the Trump administration were “void and illegal.”
On June 16, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts struck down the termination of hundreds of research grants at the National Institutes of Health. Judge William Young ordered the funding to be immediately restored.
APHA and its partners, including ACLU and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, had argued in an April 2 lawsuit that the cancellations were unjustified and politically driven. About 800 NIH grants had been cut, many of which addressed topics disfavored by the Trump administration, such as diversity and LGBTQ+ health.
“This is rewarding, and it’s an acknowledgment by the courts that health equity research — health disparities research, diversity, equity and inclusion research, whatever term you want to use — is valid, and that it’s not discriminatory,” Georges Benjamin, MD, APHA executive director, told STAT News.
The cuts, which were instituted by Trump officials in February, jeopardized critical medical discoveries that drive advancements in diagnosing, preventing and treating life-threatening diseases, according to the plaintiffs in APHA v. NIH.
Nearly $16 million in research funding was cut from research by Brittany Charlton, ScD, MSc, a plaintiff in the case and associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her studies focused on the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ laws on depression, anxiety and suicide among LGBTQ+ youth and their cisgender peers, as well as disparities in birth outcomes for lesbians.
“Scientific research must be guided by evidence, not political agendas, and this ruling rightly restores important research projects that should never have been disrupted,” Charlton said in a news release.
Hundreds of other NIH grants led by APHA members were reinstated because of the judge’s ruling. In recent months, the Association had invited members to join the lawsuit and submit information about their canceled research grants, allowing their work to be covered by the decision.
The June ruling marks another victory in APHA’s ongoing efforts to protect public health from threats by the administration. In May, a judge issued a restraining order against the administration’s reorganization of the federal government thanks to another APHA case.
For more information, visit www.apha.org/under-threat.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
