Judge pauses termination of LGBTQ+ health research grants
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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration's cancelation of US National Institutes of Health grants that research on LGBTQ+ related health issues.
Ruling from the bench, US District Judge Lydia Griggsby, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said she would issue a preliminary injunction against NIH directives to terminate grants for LGBTQ+ health research, describing such directives as designed to 'focus and target LGBTQ+ members.'
'It's clear that why the funding is being terminated and why the grants will not move forward is because they relate to that community,' Griggsby said.
The lawsuit, filed in May by the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, against the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services alleges that in targeting only certain, predominantly LGBTQ+-related research projects for funding cuts, the NIH engaged in unlawful discrimination.
In determining what grants to cut, Physicians for Human Rights attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan argued on Friday, NIH employees 'literally do a search term of projects, and they literally look for words' associated with LGBTQ+ related issues – including transgender, nonbinary, and sexuality.
The reason the government is targeting transgender research projects 'is because they believe transgender people do not exist,' Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said.
'We need to take the government at its word,' he continued. 'That this a president of the United States who has spoken so denigratingly of the people that he governs'
Assistant US Attorney Michael Wilson argued that the court lacked jurisdiction and would become 'involved in what should be a political process.'
This is not the first time a district court has thwarted the NIH's attempts to cancel grants funding identity-related research.
In a separate legal challenge to the case, a district court judge in Massachusetts ruled in June that the gutting of NIH grants in diversity-related fields is illegal, though that ruling addressed only a fraction of the hundreds of grants actually terminated.
District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, said it is 'palpably clear' that 'racial discrimination and discrimination against America's LGBTQ community' was behind the NIH's grant termination plans.
Griggsby said she would issue a written ruling on the matter in the coming weeks.
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