The 1st U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston upheld an injunction to keep the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from capping indirect costs at 15% for federally funded grants to universities and other organizations engaged in scientific and medical research.
Massachusetts and 21 other state attorneys general, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and others sued to block NIH’s indirect-cost rate cap being pushed by the Trump Administration. These funds go to support physical infrastructure, libraries and research support, technology and data infrastructure, administrative support, and more. All of which goes to support the scientific and medical communities.
The three-judge panel consisting of Judge Julie Rikelman, Judge Kermit V. Lipez, and Judge Jeffery R. Howard unanimously ruled that the administration does not have the legal authority to impose such a cap without congressional approval. The court found that the policy would violate existing statutes and long-standing funding agreements and that it risked causing irreparable harm to the nation’s research ecosystem.
The opinion, authored by Judge Kermit V. Lipez for the unanimous three-judge panel, wrote:” Congress went to great lengths to ensure that NIH could not displace negotiated indirect cost reimbursement rates with a uniform rate.”
You can read the full ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals here.
Update: According to the ACLU, “Grant applications that were arbitrarily frozen, denied, or withdrawn by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will now receive individual evaluations under an agreement announced today in a lawsuit brought on behalf of scientists whose careers were upended by unlawful NIH policy directives. Under a stipulated dismissal, the NIH has agreed to use its standard process to render decisions on the plaintiffs’ stalled applications, which address urgent public health issues, including HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s disease, LGBTQ+ health, and sexual violence.”
Unless noted, all media by Chris Denny
