The United States Supreme Court allows NIH to reduce $ 2 billion of research grants

The United States Supreme Court directed the efforts of researchers to return Almost $ 2 billion in research grants Issued by the National Health Institutes (NIH). On Thursday, the court’s decision is a remarkable reflection, allowing the administration of US President Donald Trump to move forward in the scientific cuts that started in late February.

“We were ready for this:

In a divided decision, the Supreme Court considered that the lawsuits filed by the researchers to restore the grants should have been reviewed by a court specialized in contracts, instead of the provincial court in which they were submitted. However, the Supreme Court frankly ruled that the local court can review the guidelines of the national health institutes used to submit the end of the grants and winds in the status of the minimum court, the instructions are illegal and should not be used. The lower court said in June that the discounts of the Trump administration regarding diversity, fairness and integration (Dei) reached racial discrimination.

Although the Supreme Court partially ruled in favor of researchers, some scholars say that the decision is up to the actual victory by the Trump administration, because the time and cost to challenge it in a different court will be high. Decree can be spent for other legal efforts, Like one by a group of researchers at the University of CaliforniaTo re -fund them from other agencies such as the American National Science Foundation.

“In the scientific sense, this is a complete loss. “Confidence and certainty are very important to conduct research, have succeeded in observing it completely through this ruling.”

“What the court explained yesterday, if you are reduced, you will not be able to obtain any effective treatment for that,” says Samuel Bagnistos, who was until December.

The National Institutes of Technology nor the researchers who led the lawsuit against the agency did not respond natureInquiries about the ruling.

Legal challenges

Early this year, the National Institutes of Health began to finish thousands of research grants related to a large number of topics that the Trump administration distorted, including Dei, HIV/Aids and Covid-19. Before nature I found that the cuts had destroyed the entire fields of study, such as investigations into the health of transgender people. The loss of billions of dollars from financing to dozens of research institutions, such as Stanford University in California, led to the demobilization of employees.

The rules of the judge against discounts in grants national institutes of intestinal national institutes – and are called discrimination

Many US states, researchers and organizations that represent scholars represent lawsuits that defy discounts in the National Institutes of Health in early April, on the pretext that the ends were illegal because the agency – the largest salt of biomedical research in the world – did not follow appropriate procedures and did not give an appropriate logic to cancel growth.

In June, Judge William Young of the US District Court in the Massachusetts Province in Boston had spent the national health institutes instructions used to end grants and about 800 fines, including those related to Dei, were illegal. “I have been on the bench 40 years ago – I have never seen a government racial discrimination like this,” Young said in a hearing on his decision.

The following month, a committee of three judges from the stadium from the stadium rejected a request from the Trump administration’s request to suspend Young’s referee, noting that the cuts will delay life saving research by years, if not contracts. Then the government submitted an emergency seam to the Supreme Court.