NIH Director: DEI Grants Reinstated by Court Order Will Not Be Renewed

Throughout the year, researchers have been encouraged by legal rulings pushing back against National Institutes of Health guidelines to stop and deprioritize work they deem related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In June, two lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in federal court in Boston led to the elimination of more than 2,000 grants and the restoration of their funding. And just this week, an agreement with plaintiffs to review DEI-related research applications led to the funding of more than a hundred grants whose review had been suspended. But in comments made on a podcast published Wednesday, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya indicated that the reprieve could be short-lived for the grants reinstated in June, and that they could be terminated sometime next year.

“As best I can understand the legal aspects of things, that for the subsidies that have been suspended — that they’ve forced us to restore — we can’t take them away,” Bhattacharya said in an interview with journalist Paul Thacker. “But when it comes to renewal, these grants no longer meet NIH priorities. I put a statement from the director that says, ‘Look, uh, we’re no longer interested in DEI funding.’ So when they are renewed during the year, we will not renew them.

It is unclear whether his comments include the stalled proposals that are currently being evaluated under the new agreement between the NIH and the plaintiffs; The NIH was not required to restore them. Asked for comment on Bhattacharya’s remarks, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said: “NIH does not comment on grant determinations. »

In the first months of the Trump administration, he halted an unprecedented number of projects in an effort to shrink the NIH’s research portfolio that he deemed linked to “DEI.” A large number of state attorneys general and professional organizations have filed lawsuits, calling the guidelines arbitrary and capricious. A federal district judge agreed and went further, saying the guidelines amounted to discrimination, leading to the restoration of more than 2,000 projects.

An appeal to the Supreme Court complicated the matter. The court issued an emergency ruling that the guidelines were likely illegal, but that the judge probably did not have the authority to reinstate the grants and that individual researchers should take their complaints to the Court of Federal Claims. Regardless, the agency did not end the rewards a second time.

This week, the NIH and plaintiffs reached an agreement on grant proposals that were held up due to confusion over guidelines, to “evaluate each application individually and in good faith.”

But the NIH funding approval process itself has become more influenced by political priorities in recent months. In August, Bhattacharya published a list of priorities for future research. In December, NIH program managers, who manage the grants, received instructions on how to ensure their portfolios align with this set of priorities.

Some projects that were not directly affected by the litigation also began to evolve. NIH researchers and staff have renegotiated some projects, in many cases to remove words they believe were flagged by policymakers. The December guidance to NIH staff states that renegotiation of projects should not simply be a matter of “changing words.”

In the podcast, Bhattacharya said that DEI-related research projects fall into three categories: grants that have been renegotiated, grants that have been terminated and not affected by court rulings, and those that “the courts forced us to restore.”

This last bucket, he continued, “does not meet our priorities and will not be renewed, in a way, because it does not, we, you know, we have changed direction.”

STAT’s coverage of health inequalities is supported by a grant from the Commonwealth Fund. Our funders are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.