UC Preliminary Injunction Expanded

Now, the injunction also covers NIH (National Institutes of Health), DoD (Department of Defense), and DOT (Department of Transportation), and the Trump Administration has restored almost all of the 500 National Institutes of Health grants that were suspended in July at UC Los Angeles (UCLA).

According to CalMatters, the NIH has restored all but nine grants to UCLA health science researchers, and the federal National Science Foundation in August restored 300 grants it had suspended a month earlier.

This injunction means that funding for scientific research the Trump Administration withheld from the UCLA will be restarted–it froze 800 science grants that pay for research into life-saving drugs, dementia, heart disease in rural areas, robotics education and countless science inquiries nationwide. For now, the university will be spared from a “devastating fiscal blow”, according to Politico.

The UCLA “Deal”

                                                                                              
In July, over $580 million in research grants were cut from UCLA, due to Trump’s accusation that Jewish students and faculty were abused and discriminated against during pro-Palestinian protests. The school was also accused of improperly considering race when deciding on which students to admit. However, over 600 Jewish faculty, students, staff and alumni of UCLA wrote that cutting funding in response to those claims is “misguided and punitive.” In a public letter, they wrote: “Cutting off hundreds of millions of research funds will do nothing to make UCLA safer for Jews nor diminish antisemitism in the world.”

Justice officials came up with a deal: UCLA would have to pay $1 billion and make changes to the admissions process and other policies in exchange for the return of the research money. But the university didn’t budge, unlike Columbia University, which was also accused of violating the civil rights of Jewish students and faculty. Columbia agreed to pay the government $200 million to get back $400 million in research grants.

UCLA stuck to its guns and filed a lawsuit in California, arguing that the grant terminations were unconstitutional because they were cut “without proper review or clear explanation.” Judge Lin issued a preliminary injunction in June, temporarily restoring funding cuts from three government agencies, which the plaintiffs later sought to expand to cover the frozen UCLA grants.

Judge Lin’s previous ruling had ordered three other federal agencies to restore terminated grants because the agencies didn’t follow the law in how those grants can be pulled. Her preliminary injunction also applies to any future terminations done via form letters that don’t give specific reasons for canceling a grant.

Since Trump took office in January, many cases have been brought by individual scientists and researchers, by universities and higher education organizations, and by some states protesting the actions of federal research agencies.

The injunctions issued last month block additional agencies from cutting their grants, and extends beyond earlier rulings, reported Law360. The federal government had until September 29th to file a status report confirming that it had complied with Judge Lin’s injunction, or explaining why certain steps haven’t been completed.

Thakur v. Trump

Thakur v Trump was initially filed in early June by UC researchers whose grants were terminated by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Two months later, researchers at UCLA were added to the suit after NSF, NIH, and the Department of Energy suspended hundreds of millions of dollars of grants, with the Trump administration alleging UCLA was practicing antisemitism and discriminating against women athletes.

The researcher plaintiffs told Law360 in a statement that, “We are deeply appreciative of the court’s attention to our claims and to the extension of the preliminary injunction, resulting in the reinstatement of National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Department of Transportation research grants across the UC system.” As well, a UC spokesperson said, “While we were not party to the suit, restoration of federal funding is critical to research the University of California performs on behalf of California and the nation.”

The case is Neeta Thakur et al. v. Donald Trump et al., case number 3:25-cv-04737, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.