U.S. District Court Grants Preliminary Injunction Against Trump Administration Over Canceled UC Research Grants
Judge Rita F. Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has granted a preliminary injunction on behalf of six University of California (UC) faculty and other researchers whose grants were terminated in their class action lawsuit against the Trump Administration. The injunction orders the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Environmental Protection Agency to reinstate the UC researchers’ terminated grants. The injunction applies on a prospective basis to any future grant terminations by these agencies.
Additionally, the court provisionally certified two plaintiff classes under the preliminary injunction consisting of “a) those whose grants were terminated for researching blacklisted DEI topics, and (b) those whose grants were terminated by form letter without any grant-specific explanation.”
The Court found that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their First Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act claims. Plaintiffs brought additional claims, including for Fifth Amendment Due Process violations, violations of the Separation of Powers, and violations of the Take Care clause of the Constitution, but the Court declined to reach a decision on those claims for purposes of resolving the motion for preliminary injunction. In her order, Judge Lin stated, “an injunction serves the interests of the general public where it ensures that federal agency actions ‘comply with the Constitution.’” By June 30, 2025, Defendants must submit a status report to the Court “confirming that all steps to comply with the preliminary injunction have been completed or, in the event that has not occurred, an explanation of why it was not feasible and a description of the steps that have been taken thus far.”
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, declared that the grant terminations violate free speech under the First Amendment and the right to due process under the Fifth Amendment, among others. As detailed in the complaint, the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) abrupt cancellations of already awarded grants “ignored or contradicted the purposes for which Congress created the granting agencies and appropriated funds and dispensed with the regular procedures and due process afforded grantees under the Administrative Procedure Act, in implementing the Trump Administration’s political ‘cost-cutting’ agenda and ideological purity campaign.”
The plaintiff class is led by Elizabeth Cabraser, Richard Heimann, Kevin Budner, Annie Wanless, and Nabila Abdallah with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP; Tony Schoenberg, Linda Gilleran, Kyle McLorg, Jake Darin, and Katherine Balkoski with Farella Braun + Martel LLP; and Erwin Chemerinsky and Claudia Polsky with the U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
Read the original complaint here and Judge Lin’s order here.
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