Universities Sue Government Over Biomedical Research Funding Cuts

Universities filed an additional lawsuit Monday that seeks to block the cuts nationally.

A federal district judge granted a temporary restraining order Monday, blocking the Trump administration from making drastic cuts to biomedical research funding in 22 states that banded together to sue.

Judge Angel Kelley, in federal district court in Massachusetts, ordered the National Institutes of Health not to implement a funding change the agency had announced Friday night, which would dramatically reduce funding to universities and other research organizations for indirect costs related to research.

University leaders announced Monday that they were also suing to halt the cuts, with a lawsuit that has the potential to be more far-reaching because the organizations filing it have nationwide reach.

The White House said the funding change would reduce unnecessary administrative costs, not biomedical research funding. NIH said the directive would save $4 billion annually. But university leaders and scientists countered that the agency's action would abruptly disrupt ongoing research, jeopardizing clinical trials, labs, and scientists' jobs.

Twenty-two Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health on Monday, charging that the action is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

In their complaint, the attorneys general said the impact would be immediate and result in layoffs, suspension of clinical trials, disruption of research, and laboratory closures. It sought the temporary restraining order only in the 22 states that brought the action, Andrea Joy Campbell, the attorney general of Massachusetts, said in a news conference Monday. The cuts affect everyone in the country, but only Democratic attorneys general stepped up, she said.

Later Monday, three higher education associations representing colleges and universities nationally -- the Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the American Council on Education -- also sued in federal district court in Massachusetts.

Some of the country's most prominent institutions, and the entire University of California system, joined the suit, including Brandeis, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, George Washington, Tufts and Johns Hopkins universities, Caltech, the University of Chicago, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Rochester.

The lawsuit called NIH's action "flagrantly unlawful," and said that if allowed to stand, cutting-edge work "to cure disease and lengthen lifespans will suffer, and our country will lose its status as the destination for solving the world's biggest health problems." When a similar proposal was made in 2017, Congress expressly forbade it.

"Besides harming the ability of research universities to continue doing critical NIH research that seeks out new and more effective approaches to treating cancer, heart disease, and dementia, among others, and translating basic science into cures, this cut would also undermine universities' essential training of the next generation of biomedical and health science researchers," the groups said in a statement Monday.

Spokespeople for NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

When the change was announced on Friday, it startled university leaders and researchers across the country.

"The United States should have the best medical research in the world," NIH announced. "It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go toward direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead." The agency imposed a standard indirect cost rate of 15 percent on all grants. On social media, NIH said the move would save more than $4 billion a year -- and noted, in the same post, the giant endowments of three elite universities.

The "facilities and administrative" costs, also known as indirect costs, cover some of the expenses incurred by undertaking research for the government, such as maintenance of labs, utilities, data processing, and the administrative cost of compliance with regulations. Those reimbursement rates are negotiated and set with federal agencies every several years and vary from school to school.

The indirect costs are not deducted from a grant to pay for overhead. Rather, indirect costs are added to the grant.

Critics have argued that change has been needed for a long time. "It's a huge win for people who want their health research dollars to support health research, instead of campus bloat," said Frederick M. Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, when he heard about the NIH cuts. He said it would be good for taxpayers and encourage universities to operate more efficiently. "This is going to be a real shock to that system."

But many university leaders and researchers spent the weekend scrambling to assess the impact and determine whether they could afford to continue research already underway.

Stanford University officials had told the campus community that the NIH cut would mean a $160 million loss for the school. Emory University leaders said the cut would mean a loss of $140 million and could affect nearly every academic unit at the school.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) said Monday that she had been hearing from institutions in West Virginia about the cuts. "I'm concerned about it. It's pretty drastic. So I'm thinking we need to look at this."

Earlier Monday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the cuts arbitrary and devastating, and said they would stop vital research and lead to job losses in her state.

Other Republican senators have said they support the change.

Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.