The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with President Donald Trump's priorities.
U.S. District Judge William Young found that the abrupt cancellations ignored long-held government rules and standards.
Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, also said the cuts amounted to "racial discrimination and discrimination against America's LGBTQ community."
"I've never seen government racial discrimination like this," Young said at a hearing last month. An appeals court left the ruling in place.
The ruling came in lawsuits filed by 16 attorneys general, public-health advocacy groups, and some affected scientists. His decision addressed only a fraction of the hundreds of NIH research projects that have been cut.
The Trump administration's appeal also takes aim at nearly two dozen cases over funding.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court's emergency docket from April that allowed cuts to teacher training programs to go forward. The order shows that district judges shouldn't be hearing those cases at all, but rather sending them to federal claims court, he argued.
"Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize—as members of this Court have done—that paeans to 'diversity' often conceal invidious racial discrimination," he wrote.
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