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Business Wire
18 hours ago
- Health
- Business Wire
Lieff Cabraser & Farella Braun + Martel Announce That University of California Researchers Have Filed a Class Action Lawsuit Against the Trump Administration for the Illegal and Unconstitutional Termination of Critical Research Grants
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lieff Cabraser & Farella Braun + Martel Announce that a group of six University of California faculty and other researchers have filed a class action in federal court against the Trump Administration on behalf of all UC researchers whose previously approved agency grants were terminated pursuant to Executive Orders or other directives of President Trump, as implemented through the Department of Government Efficiency ('DOGE'). University of California Researchers File Class Action Suit Against Trump Administration for Illegal & Unconstitutional Termination of Critical Research Grants Plaintiffs seek a declaration that these grant terminations violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers, the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, and the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process, as well as statutes that govern agencies' missions and grantmaking and the Administrative Procedure Act. As detailed in the Complaint, these 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.' According to UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a leading constitutional law scholar and co-counsel on the case, 'President Trump and DOGE have arbitrarily cut off funding to researchers throughout the University of California system in clear violation of the Constitution and federal laws. There has not been a semblance of due process or compliance with the procedures required by federal statutes and regulations. This has caused great harm to a large number of faculty and other researchers and the UC research enterprise as a whole, with potentially grave consequences to everyone in society who benefits from the research in a myriad of disciplines." As described by Plaintiff Dr. Neeta Thakur, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at UCSF, 'The EPA has abruptly terminated a three-year grant that was supporting research on how wildfire smoke affects the lungs, heart, and brain of all Californians. My colleagues and I at UCSF and UC Berkeley have worked on this important project for two years, and its sudden end — communicated through a simple form letter — puts our progress in danger. This decision disrupts our ongoing work with community-based organizations and stops us from generating life-saving information designed to improve public health and protect the well-being of all Californians, especially those living in at-risk communities.' Plaintiff Jedda Foreman, the Director of the Center for Environmental Learning at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, explains, 'My team and I at the Lawrence Hall of Science earned NSF grants to make science education more accessible to all learners. Instilling a love of science is critical to envisioning and creating a better future for us all. In one day, we lost two projects, and nearly 75% of our funding, because of terminations by NSF. A week later, NSF terminated yet another one of our projects. These terminations haven't just affected our team, but also our longtime community partners and thousands of students across the United States.' These are just two of hundreds of examples of the damage wrought by the Trump Administration's illegal and unconstitutional terminations. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, seeks a return to the pre-Trump Administration process of orderly grantmaking that aligns with congressionally authorized purposes, and affords due process to grant-funded researchers. Plaintiffs seek, for themselves and the class of UC researchers who have suffered unlawful grant terminations, an injunction restoring their lost funding, providing them sufficient time to complete the work for which their grants were originally approved, and preventing further illegal grant terminations. Plaintiffs will be filing a motion for a temporary restraining order on June 5, 2025. The case, No. 3:25-cv-4737, is assigned to the Honorable Rita F. Lin. Background on the Lawsuit Each year, researchers in the UC system receive hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the full spectrum of federal agencies, ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency, to the National Science Foundation, to the National Institutes of Health. These grants fund the production of new knowledge and fuel the development of discoveries that greatly benefit society at large. The grants have also been key to the innovation that has consistently earned the UC system pride of place among research institutions, including first place in the list of universities with the most utility patents. They have also made the UC Berkeley campus the number one ranked public research in institution in the world for nine of the past ten years. Before President Trump took office, federal grantmaking proceeded under the authority of Congress, which appropriated taxpayer funds for specific public purposes. For decades, agencies carried out these statutory directives and observed due process in making, renewing, and (only seldom) terminating grants. They each adhered to their own grant regulations and followed Administrative Procedure Act processes when modifying such regulations. On the rare occasions when agencies terminated grants, they did so pursuant to predictable, regularized processes and terminated grants only for reasons stated in the regulations. All of this changed abruptly on January 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day). After January 20, 2025, Defendants Donald J. Trump and DOGE, through a flurry of Executive Orders and other directives, commanded the Federal Agency Defendants to terminate scores of previously awarded research grants. As the Complaint notes, the 'abrupt, wholesale, and unilateral termination of these grants has violated the Constitution's bedrock principle of separation of powers and its guarantees of freedom of speech and due process; flouted the Impoundment Control Act limits on the Executive's ability to withhold or redirect congressionally appropriated money; ignored statutory requirements that agencies fulfill their substantive missions and fund congressionally specified activities; contravened agency-specific grant-making regulations that cannot by law be revised on an abrupt, unexplained, chaotic basis; and violated the Administrative Procedure Act through this arbitrary, capricious, and ultra vires conduct.' As further detailed in the Complaint, grounds the agencies have offered for such terminations were spurious. In some cases, agency correspondence to grantees asserted that grant termination would reduce public costs and promote government efficiency, although no evidence was provided to support this claim. In other cases, agency communications made it clear that grants were being terminated to further Defendant Trump's political objectives, which included the elimination of research on climate, environmental justice, 'gender ideology,' and 'DEI.' These grant terminations are occurring not because the grant-funded research departed from its originally approved purpose, but because that purpose now offends the political agenda and ideological requirements of the Trump Administration. In terminating these grants, the agencies have violated the Constitution, numerous federal statutes, and their own regulations. Plaintiff UC researchers have suffered concrete financial, professional, and other harms from Defendants' unilateral termination of grants for projects to which they have already dedicated time and effort; for research upon which they have staked careers and reputations; and for work with research teams through which they endeavored to train a next generation. These terminations have impaired and will impair the public-serving research mission of the UC system and the concern for public welfare that undergirds it. Named Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class will continue to suffer such harms on an ongoing basis, and will experience increasing and irreparable harm absent the court declaration and injunction they seek through this lawsuit.
LeMonde
3 days ago
- Business
- LeMonde
The heart of Trump's wrangle with judges: Nationwide injunctions
In the "Big Beautiful Bill," the budget legislation passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, American constitutional law experts noted a provision concerning the judiciary. Slipped into Section 70302 ("Restriction on enforcement"), this measure would limit the power of federal courts to sanction parties who do not comply with their rulings. The bill prohibits judges from using public funds to "enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued." In other words, it would require anyone suing the government to provide a financial guarantee before the court can use its enforcement tools – such as sanctions, fines or contempt of court – to ensure its orders are respected. According to most legal experts, if confirmed by the US Senate, this measure would effectively deprive judges of any coercive mechanism. "Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions, which parties are free to disregard," warned Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. According to his colleague, economist Robert Reich, "Trump will have crowned himself king," and no Congress could stop him, due to the lack of judicial support for enforcing requests for hearings or investigations.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A Showdown Over The Power Of The Courts Is Headed To The Senate
In the House of Representatives' recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, something ugly lurks beneath the surface. It is a provision — a single paragraph found about halfway through the bill's 1,000-plus pages — that could hamstring judges, reduce access to the courts for the average person and reverse a number of the Trump administration's legal setbacks and defeats. What is the provision, and how likely is it to become a reality? HuffPost breaks down what it all means. Section 70302 of the bill states that 'no court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.' In simple terms, this means that judges wouldn't be able to issue contempt orders against defendants who defy the courts unless the person who first sued for an injunction or restraining order had forked over a bond at the very start of their lawsuit. Contempt citations, which occur when a person fails to obey court orders, can carry financial penalties as well as jail time. Bonds are taken to limit financial damages to the person or entity being sued. The Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c) has offered guidance on this point since 1938, telling judges they can only hand down preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders if they first issued a bond that was 'proper.' A preliminary injunction stops a party in a legal dispute from taking any further action; a temporary restraining order is similar but it only lasts for a short window of time, usually 10 days. A judge ultimately decides what that 'proper' bond amount should be. Federal courts often do not set bonds at all due to the large disparity in power and resources between the United States and an individual plaintiff, judges often put practicality first when it comes to lawsuits against the federal government and Rule 65 is applied at their discretion: A single person would likely never be able to put up a financial bond big enough to cover the full cost of potential injury the federal government may experience if hit with an injunction. As a result, a judge might set such a bond for a nominal amount, like $1 or even $0. This lowers the hurdle that the public must climb over when contesting the actions of its own government. Importantly, the provision in the bill passed by the House applies retroactively, without any stated time limit. This could mean that injunctions handed down by the courts years ago — like those instructing the government to stop segregating schools, for example, and any other where a bond was not taken — could potentially be undone if a bond was not taken first, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and distinguished professor of law at Berkeley Law School, recently told HuffPost. The language in the provision is somewhat vague, and it's not clear whether bonds set by a judge at $0 would be swept up, too. The biggest hurdle the provision faces is that it likely doesn't meet the requirements of the Byrd Rule, which prohibits passing a budget bill that includes anything 'extraneous' or not related to fiscal spending. There are six tests senators must use to determine if a provision is 'extraneous,' according to the Congressional Research Service: 1, if the provision does not produce any change in revenue or the amount of funds spent on something; 2, if it produces an increase in the amount of funds spent on something or a decrease in revenue; 3, if it is outside the jurisdiction of the congressional committee that submitted the provision to begin with; 4, if it only changes revenue or spending in a way that is 'merely incidental'; 5, it increases the deficit in a fiscal year beyond what was already covered in a budget bill; and 6, it would amend specific parts of the Social Security Act relevant to old age, survivors and disability insurance. The provision in the tax bill attempts to meet that criteria by saying courts can't use 'appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation.' Although judges have the power to hold someone in contempt, the related penalties — for example, whether someone gets arrested and is taken to jail — are left up to the U.S. Marshals service, Chemerinsky explained. That agency is housed under the Justice Department, which has its funds appropriated by Congress. Khadijah Silver, the supervising attorney for civil rights at Lawyers for Good Government, told HuffPost the U.S. Marshals Service 'connection is incredibly thin.' 'The Byrd Rule requires budget reconciliation measures to have a direct fiscal impact, and this is fundamentally about restricting judicial power, not spending,' Silver said. 'More importantly, as the Supreme Court established nearly a century ago in Michelson v. United States, Congress cannot undermine the essential functions of federal courts. The contempt power is integral to judicial authority under Article III — without it, court orders become meaningless suggestions that the executive branch can ignore at will.' At least one Republican senator demurred when asked whether the provision was likely to make it to the final bill. During a town hall in Iowa on Friday, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told attendees that every provision in the 1,100-page bill would go through a review process before it came up for a vote — and said Republicans in the chamber wouldn't be making the final call. 'We're not the ones who make those decisions, folks. If you follow Senate procedures, it's nonpartisan parliamentarians who make that decision. … And they are very strict about this as well. I don't think any argument that could ever be made that this [provision] impacts mandatory spending or revenues — I just don't see it getting into the Senate bill,' Ernst said. The current Senate parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed to the role by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, in 2012. But what Ernst failed to mention was that senators could vote to overrule MacDonough if she were to suggest tossing the provision — and that a simple majority is all that is needed to do so when it comes to budget bills. Republicans hold the majority in the Senate. If the provision were passed, it would have the potential to unwind injunctions or restraining orders that judges have already set against the Trump administration as the president has pushed through executive orders attempting to dismantle the federal government or target groups he perceives as a threat to his administration's agenda, from people born to immigrant parents to law firms he claims are weaponized against him, to trans people serving in the U.S. military. Judges in the nation's lower courts have ruled against the administration 96% of the time so far, according to an analysis by political science professor Adam Bonica of Stanford University. Many cases where an injunction was issued could be in jeopardy if the provision is left intact, and the threat of a judge issuing future contempt citations against the administration evaporates as well. There is little question the provision would 'embolden government excesses and hobble judges' ability to enforce their rulings,' Silver said. 'This is most problematic in cases where the injunction is based on the government's breach of the Constitution,' they said. 'It forces private actors who have been harmed and are being harmed to pay for the privilege of having those harms brought before the court.' In short, it's now up to the Senate whether the judicial system will change drastically and quickly. 'This provision would render hundreds of existing court orders unenforceable overnight. We're talking about everything from school desegregation orders to police reform mandates to protection of immigrants' due process rights,' Silver said. 'It would create a 'catch me if you can' system where the government could violate the Constitution faster than courts could stop them. This isn't about fiscal responsibility — it's about neutering the last meaningful check on executive power when it tramples our constitutional rights.' House Passes Trump's Tax And Spending Cuts The Long Shadow Of Bill Clinton Over The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' Faces Uphill Battle In The Senate
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Congress and the Supreme Court are trying to undermine lower court judges
Both Congress and the Supreme Court seem poised to kneecap what may be the only meaningful remaining constitutional check on the presidency: lower federal court judges. Last week, the House of Representatives passed the absurdly named 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' a hodgepodge of controversial tax breaks for the wealthy, spending reductions and increased work requirements for food aid and Medicaid programs and huge funding increases for President Trump's mass migrant removal program, among other provisions. Buried in its 1,000 pages is also this poison pill: 'No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued.' As law professor Erwin Chemerinsky explained for Just Security, the bill effectively requires payment of a bond before a federal judge can issue an injunction against the government or a private party. Yet 'those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunize unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review. It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.' Injunctions have been used to force the government's compliance with federal law since at least 1913. By mandating the pre-payment of a bond as a prerequisite to injunctions, Chemerinsky writes, 'the House bill would make the court orders in these cases completely unenforceable.' This is a shameless gift to the Trump administration, which is facing down hundreds of lawsuits in the lower federal courts that seek to vindicate constitutional rights as basic as due process and free speech. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's far-right majority is also taking steps to undermine the lower courts' authority. Consider the case challenging Trump's executive order invaliding the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. At the Trump administration's invitation, the justices have detoured into the question of so-called 'universal injunctions' — admonishing their district court colleagues for acting too big for their britches while sidestepping the president's blatant disregard of the 14th Amendment itself. The implications of that case are stark. If the majority sides with Trump by banning judges from issuing orders that stop illegal government behavior nationwide, it could mean that every individual affected by an unconstitutional executive order — including the millions of children whose citizenship is tied to birth — must hire a lawyer and file a separate case to enforce the Constitution's express language, effectively giving Trump a practical 'win' on technical grounds. In the meantime, Trump would be free to impose his unconstitutional ban against the vast majority of people affected through a procedural maneuver that sidesteps the heart of the problem: his own overreach. For the high court to seriously entertain this argument on the facts of this particular case is a swipe at the lower courts' relative authority to uphold the Constitution against government abuses, too. (The Supreme Court only takes approximately 1 percent of appeal petitions per year, so it can't do it all.) On Thursday, in Trump v. Wilcox, a 6-3 majority overruled a 90-year-old precedent upholding Congress's ability to require presidents to show cause before firing the heads of certain agencies — in that case, the heads of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. As Justice Elena Kagan noted in her dissenting opinion, by firing the agency heads without providing a reason, 'Trump has chosen … to take the law into his own hands' in a way that no president has attempted 'since the 1950s (or even before).' And the majority handed Trump his win 'on an emergency docket' which, wrote Kagan, 'while fit for some things, should not be used to override or revise existing law.' The conservative majority's snub of the work of the lower courts without full briefing and oral argument in its own capacity as an appellate court once again ignores its similarly restrained role under the system of separated powers. Article III of the Constitution creates 'one Supreme Court,' but is silent on the number of justices or the scope of their authority to hear appeals. Congress gets to determine both by statute. Congress is also responsible for establishing the 'inferior courts,' which it did in the first Judiciary Act of 1798. The power of all federal judges — both on the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals (the intermediate federal courts) and in the district courts (the trial-level courts) — is confined to deciding 'cases,' meaning distinct disputes brought by feuding parties over a concrete injury claimed by the plaintiff. No federal court, including the Supreme Court, is supposed to make laws out of whole cloth. That is Congress's job. In other words, there is nothing magically different about Supreme Court justices as compared to lower federal courts regarding their power to decide 'cases' under Article III as an initial matter. In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court ruled in 1803 that it has the ultimate constitutional prerogative to review the other branches' actions for adherence to the rule of law. But with rare exceptions, Article III confines its power to hearing appeals from other courts: 'The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.' An appeals court traditionally operates by carefully reviewing the record from the court below. In the Wilcox decision, the majority perfunctorily cast that part aside. As Professor Chemerinsky — a giant in the world of constitutional scholarship — underscores, House Republicans' stealth effort to disable lower federal courts from enforcing injunctions in deference to a single man is a red-light moment for democracy. If the Supreme Court continues to shrug off its own colleagues' attempts to check the presidency, it could mean a checkmate on the Constitution itself. Kimberly Wehle is author of the book 'Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works — and Why.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Congress and the Supreme Court are trying to undermine lower court judges
Both Congress and the Supreme Court seem poised to kneecap what may be the only meaningful remaining constitutional check on the presidency: lower federal court judges. Last week, the House of Representatives passed the absurdly named 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' a hodgepodge of controversial tax breaks for the wealthy, spending reductions and increased work requirements for food aid and Medicaid programs and huge funding increases for President Trump's mass migrant removal program, among other provisions. Buried in its 1,000 pages is also this poison pill: 'No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued.' As law professor Erwin Chemerinsky explained for Just Security, the bill effectively requires payment of a bond before a federal judge can issue an injunction against the government or a private party. Yet 'those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunize unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review. It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.' Injunctions have been used to force the government's compliance with federal law since at least 1913. By mandating the pre-payment of a bond as a prerequisite to injunctions, Chemerinsky writes, 'the House bill would make the court orders in these cases completely unenforceable.' This is a shameless gift to the Trump administration, which is facing down hundreds of lawsuits in the lower federal courts that seek to vindicate constitutional rights as basic as due process and free speech. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's far-right majority is also taking steps to undermine the lower courts' authority. Consider the case challenging Trump's executive order invaliding the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. At the Trump administration's invitation, the justices have detoured into the question of so-called 'universal injunctions' — admonishing their district court colleagues for acting too big for their britches while sidestepping the president's blatant disregard of the 14th Amendment itself. The implications of that case are stark. If the majority sides with Trump by banning judges from issuing orders that stop illegal government behavior nationwide, it could mean that every individual affected by an unconstitutional executive order — including the millions of children whose citizenship is tied to birth — must hire a lawyer and file a separate case to enforce the Constitution's express language, effectively giving Trump a practical 'win' on technical grounds. In the meantime, Trump would be free to impose his unconstitutional ban against the vast majority of people affected through a procedural maneuver that sidesteps the heart of the problem: his own overreach. For the high court to seriously entertain this argument on the facts of this particular case is a swipe at the lower courts' relative authority to uphold the Constitution against government abuses, too. (The Supreme Court only takes approximately 1 percent of appeal petitions per year, so it can't do it all.) On Thursday, in Trump v. Wilcox, a 6-3 majority overruled a 90-year-old precedent upholding Congress's ability to require presidents to show cause before firing the heads of certain agencies — in that case, the heads of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. As Justice Elena Kagan noted in her dissenting opinion, by firing the agency heads without providing a reason, 'Trump has chosen … to take the law into his own hands' in a way that no president has attempted 'since the 1950s (or even before).' And the majority handed Trump his win 'on an emergency docket' which, wrote Kagan, 'while fit for some things, should not be used to override or revise existing law.' The conservative majority's snub of the work of the lower courts without full briefing and oral argument in its own capacity as an appellate court once again ignores its similarly restrained role under the system of separated powers. Article III of the Constitution creates 'one Supreme Court,' but is silent on the number of justices or the scope of their authority to hear appeals. Congress gets to determine both by statute. Congress is also responsible for establishing the 'inferior courts,' which it did in the first Judiciary Act of 1798. The power of all federal judges — both on the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals (the intermediate federal courts) and in the district courts (the trial-level courts) — is confined to deciding 'cases,' meaning distinct disputes brought by feuding parties over a concrete injury claimed by the plaintiff. No federal court, including the Supreme Court, is supposed to make laws out of whole cloth. That is Congress's job. In other words, there is nothing magically different about Supreme Court justices as compared to lower federal courts regarding their power to decide 'cases' under Article III as an initial matter. In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court ruled in 1803 that it has the ultimate constitutional prerogative to review the other branches' actions for adherence to the rule of law. But with rare exceptions, Article III confines its power to hearing appeals from other courts: 'The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.' An appeals court traditionally operates by carefully reviewing the record from the court below. In the Wilcox decision, the majority perfunctorily cast that part aside. As Professor Chemerinsky — a giant in the world of constitutional scholarship — underscores, House Republicans' stealth effort to disable lower federal courts from enforcing injunctions in deference to a single man is a red-light moment for democracy. If the Supreme Court continues to shrug off its own colleagues' attempts to check the presidency, it could mean a checkmate on the Constitution itself. Kimberly Wehle is author of the book 'Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works — and Why.'
