Federal judge rules NEH grant cancellations by DOGE were unconstitutional
The Facts
- U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the Trump administration’s termination of National Endowment for the Humanities grants was unconstitutional.
- The ruling concerned more than 1,400 NEH grants totaling more than $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds.
- The canceled grants affected scholars, writers, research institutions, scholarly groups and other humanities organizations.
- Judge McMahon found that DOGE officials lacked statutory authority to identify or direct the termination of the grants.
- The lawsuits were brought by organizations including scholarly groups and The Authors Guild, along with individual grant recipients whose funding was canceled.
- The court said the grant terminations violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.
- The judge permanently barred the administration from carrying out the challenged grant terminations.
- Court filings and reporting on the case showed DOGE used artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT, as part of the process for identifying grants for cancellation.
How left and right are reading this
- Both agree
- More than 1,400 congressionally funded humanities grants were unlawfully terminated, and the court’s permanent bar rests on a shared premise that the executive cannot cancel public grants outside the legal limits governing how that power is exercised.
- They split on
- Whether the story is chiefly about protecting scholars and organizations from viewpoint-based or unequal treatment in public funding, or about enforcing Congress’s control over who has authority to terminate grants in the first place.
Context
Who brought the lawsuits?
The cases were brought by scholarly organizations including the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, as well as The Authors Guild and individual grant recipients whose NEH funding was terminated CBS News,AP NEWS,Yahoo.
Why does this ruling matter beyond the grant recipients?
The decision addresses whether the executive branch and DOGE could cancel congressionally approved humanities funding and whether the government targeted grants based on viewpoint or protected characteristics, making it a broader test of agency authority and constitutional limits on grant decisions NYT,Reuters,AP NEWS.
What role did AI play in the case?
Reporting and court records cited in the coverage say DOGE officials used ChatGPT and other AI tools to help identify grants for termination, including by screening for projects they associated with DEI-related content; Judge McMahon criticized that process in her opinion NYT,Spokesman Review,news.bloomberglaw.c….
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