US judge temporarily blocks Trump's research funding cuts
BOSTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's administration's sharp cuts to federal grant funding for universities, medical centers and other research institutions.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley's decision was a win for Democratic attorneys general from 22 U.S. states who sued on Monday in federal court in Boston to challenge cuts adopted by the National Institutes of Health to the reimbursement rate for some costs of the research institutions.
The cuts were due to take effect on Monday.
Kelley, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, scheduled a hearing for Feb. 21 for further arguments.
The lawsuit, led by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan,concerned the reimbursement rate for research institution costs not directly related to project goals, such as laboratory space, faculty, equipment and infrastructure.
The states accused the NIH of exceeding its authority and of violating federal law.
"The president does not have the power to unilaterally defy Congress and defund live-saving medical and scientific research," New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who also signed on to the lawsuit, said in a video posted to X after the ruling.
On Friday, the Trump administration said it was capping the rate it would reimburse those indirect costs at 15%, down from an average of about 27% to 28%. The NIH policy is one piece of Trump's wide-ranging actions since returning to the presidency on January 20 aimed at slashing certain federal spending and dismantling parts of the U.S. government.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The NIH earlier said it spent more than $35 billion in the 2023 fiscal year on grants awarded to researchers at more than 2,500 institutions.
About $9 billion of that money went to covering overhead and an institution's indirect costs, the NIH said.
The NIH in a post on social media on Friday said the change would save the federal government $4 billion annually. It said three schools that had charged more than 60% - Harvard University, Yale University and Johns Hopkins University - possessed multibillion-dollar endowments.
The state attorneys general said if allowed to stand, NIH's action would result in layoffs, research disruptions and laboratory closures.
The lawsuit said the cuts violate language attached to funding legislation passed by Congress since 2018 that bars the NIH from making such a rate change without proper authorization. That language was adopted after Trump's first administration in 2017 proposed capping the indirect rate at 10%.
The lawsuit also accused the NIH of exceeding its authority by making the cuts apply retroactively to existing federal grants and of adopting the policy without following mandatory rulemaking procedures.
Harvard said in a statement on Monday that the cuts would "slash funding and cut research activity at Harvard and nearly every research university in our nation." Yale did not respond to a request for comment. Johns Hopkins had no immediate comment.
A group of medical trade groups, including the Association of American Medical Colleges, filed a separate lawsuit on Monday seeking to block the NIH's cuts.