By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - A group of scientists filed a class-action lawsuit on Wednesday against the U.S. National Institutes of Health, alleging the agency is unconstitutionally screening research grants to suppress viewpoints the Trump administration disfavors on topics like diversity, gender identity and climate change.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and DOGE as defendants. It is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other groups.
The plaintiffs say NIH, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research, uses a list of 235 keywords, including "gender," "Latinx" and "climate change" to flag grants for termination, denial or forced renegotiation. Researchers who refuse to scrub flagged terms risk losing funding, the complaint says.
The NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The suit is the latest challenge to the research funding cuts, which the administration says are necessary to ensure the government funds only solid science and to reverse years of misguided priorities.
The suit says that the screening applies to grants that have already cleared scientific peer review, representing an added layer of ideological review that departs from NIH's longstanding practice and congressional mandates barring politicization.
"Scientists should not have to scrub their research to receive federal funding," Arghavan Salles, a surgeon and clinical associate professor at Stanford University, said in a statement. She said her grant on sexual harassment in biomedical research was terminated as "DEI-related," referring to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The complaint alleges First Amendment violations and breaches of statutes governing grant terminations. It asks the court to vacate the policies and restore terminated grants.
In June 2025, a federal court ruled NIH's DEI-related grant terminations were unlawful, but in August 2025 the Supreme Court allowed the agency to proceed with cutting $783 million in such grants.
A federal appeals court ruled in May 2026 that such terminations likely violated the First Amendment. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to review that decision.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
