Agencies admit keyword screening terminated $2B in UC grants

Researchers ask judge to rule grant cancellations unconstitutional

Federal agencies that terminated more than 1,000 research grants at the University of California last year admitted in court filings that they used keyword searches related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities, according to documents filed in federal court. The admission, signed by the agencies, confirms that the grants were not canceled based on individual performance or compliance, the researchers’ lawyers said.

The admission marks a pivotal development in a lawsuit filed by UC researchers against the Trump administration seeking permanent restoration of the nearly $2 billion in grants. The plaintiffs’ legal team is now asking U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin to skip a trial and enter a final judgment declaring that the White House violated the Constitution, including the First Amendment, by targeting research based on political viewpoints. A hearing on that request is scheduled for Oct. 20.

The stipulations filed in the case, Thakur v. Trump, show that the agencies “did not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant” and instead used “general criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award’s compliance, or performance,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. The legal team contends that the admissions prove three constitutional violations.

First, the lawyers argue, the use of keyword searches to review and terminate grants en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits targeted research the administration found politically disfavorable, a First Amendment violation. Second, the Department of Energy terminated 283 grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while leaving untouched hundreds of grants that went to “red” states, amounting to punishment based on geography. Third, by terminating billions of dollars in grants and never rerouting that money to other grant opportunities, the administration violated the Constitution’s requirement that Congress — not the executive — determine how appropriated funds are spent.

The Department of Transportation identified six grants worth about $42 million to terminate because they sought “transportation equity,” prioritized “disadvantaged communities,” or focused on “diversifying the transportation workforce.” The termination of three of those grants led by a UC Davis professor resulted in 77 researchers abandoning 79 in-progress projects, the lawyers said. The project leaders were also forced to lay off or scramble to replace funding for more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.

The National Institutes of Health admitted to using an internal search tool to flag UC grants that mentioned “health equity,” “work force diversity,” “structural racism,” and “sexual orientation.” The NIH alone suspended or canceled more than 1,000 UC grants, including nearly 700 at UCLA, related to vaccines, cancer research and disparities in health outcomes. That figure is newly disclosed in a court filing — last year, UCLA indicated that closer to 500 NIH grants were terminated. The health research agency also declared that it is possible that DOGE, the short-lived federal office that billionaire Elon Musk led in 2025, used AI to target grants for termination.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote to the judge that these admissions show the agencies “identified the viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched the grants they funded for those that expressed those viewpoints, and terminated those grants on that basis.” That violates the researchers’ First Amendment rights, the lawyers wrote.

The Environmental Protection Agency, one of the named agencies in the suit, is in the process of settling with lawyers for the UC professors to avoid further litigation.

Judge Lin, a Biden appointee, has repeatedly sided with the UC professors and issued several preliminary injunctions forcing the federal agencies to restore the grants while she reviews the full merits of the case. This includes the restoration of hundreds of grants at UCLA that the Trump administration sought to suspend over allegations that the university tolerated antisemitism and permitted transgender women to compete on women’s sports teams. Lin faulted the administration for disregarding steps UCLA had already taken to address antisemitism, including commissioning a task force.

A separate federal district judge in Massachusetts last week dealt the Trump administration a blow in its ability to terminate grants and withhold federal funding. The White House had relied on a legal phrase in many of its funding cancellations — “no longer effectuates … agency priorities.” California and 22 other states sued, arguing that there is no law or right for the federal government to cancel funding based on new program goals after the grants were already awarded. The judge agreed.