NIH Funds: Supreme Court Ruling Puts U.S. Biomedical Research Funding in Jeopardy

The future of thousands of biomedical research projects in the United States has become caught in an unprecedented legal battle. The Supreme Court ruled last week that district courts cannot reinstate grants canceled by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), although it did uphold the reversal of the internal guidelines that prompted those cuts.

In practice, the ruling introduces a complex scenario in which researchers can challenge the legality of policies but cannot easily recover the funds that supported their projects.

Supreme Court Decision Threatens Future of NIH-Funded Research

The NIH guidelines responded to executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in early 2025. Among other measures, they prohibited funding for research related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender identity, or COVID-19, and barred racial criteria from influencing the granting of grants. In this regard, the Massachusetts District Court considered these rules to be arbitrary and discriminatory , such that they would be leading to the mass cancellation of grants for studies on HIV, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular health, or suicide prevention.

In this context, the Supreme Court decided to split the judicial response in two. On the one hand, it endorsed that district courts can continue reviewing whether the NIH guidelines violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This means that these rules remain provisionally vacated and cannot be applied while the appeals litigation continues. On the other hand, it held that claims to recover canceled NIH funds must be filed in the Court of Federal Claims, a forum specializing in contract disputes with the United States government that does not always offer effective avenues for restitution of lost funds.

Court limits recovery of canceled NIH grants while litigation over controversial research restrictions continues

In this regard, the decision to cancel the NIH grants reflects strong disagreements within the Supreme Court itself. Four conservative justices sided completely with the government and allowed both the cancellations and the guidelines to stand. Four other justices, led by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, denounced the majority as creating a procedural maze that leaves scientists without any real remedy and jeopardizes essential advances in public health. Justice Jackson warned that this approach could paralyze biomedical research and irreversibly halt thousands of clinical trials that depend on the NIH funds.

At the center of the debate are the so-called DEI funds, which for years have promoted research equity programs and guaranteed minority representation in clinical trials. Their massive elimination, carried out in less than three months, represents a blow to universities, hospitals, and community health centers across the country. Now, while the courts decide whether the United States government acted within the law, the outcome will determine not only the future of these projects, but also the relationship between science and political power in the United States.

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(Featured image by Marek Studzinski via Unsplash)

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First published in GACETA MEDICA. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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