Court blocks termination of LGBTQ-related NIH health research grants

A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland Friday blocked the National Institutes of Health from terminating grants that fund research addressing the health of sexual and gender minorities, including HIV research.

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The ruling came in GLMA v. NIH, a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal and law firms Crowell & Moring LLP and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP on behalf of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality and 16 individual health researchers whose funding was eliminated or whose grant applications have been unlawfully withheld from review. The judge issued the ruling orally after two hearings in the case, and a written order is forthcoming, according to a Lambda Legal press release.

The suit was filed in May. Defendants in the suit are the NIH and its director, Jay Bhattacharya, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The defendants had terminated hundreds of grants for research on LGBTQ+ health issues due to Donald Trump’s executive orders that forbid federally funded entities from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and from recognizing the existence of transgender people.

The grants total $800 million but are estimated to represent less than 1 percent of the total NIH portfolio. Since the new administration came in, NIH, which is under HHS, has canceled or substantially reduced 669 grants, of which at least 323 addressed the health of sexual and gender minority groups.

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Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the termination violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires that federal agencies “act rationally, transparently, and in accordance with the law,” as the suit puts it; Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bans discrimination in federally funded health programs; and the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws.

The court in Maryland held that the NIH’s actions violated Section 1557 and the equal protection clause. A federal court in Massachusetts has also ruled that such actions are unlawful.

“Today’s ruling affirms what health professionals have made clear for decades: LGBTQ+ health research is not optional; it is essential,” Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, said in the release. “NIH’s attempt to defund this work was never about science; it was an effort to erase transgender people, LGBTQ+ communities, and the researchers committed to our health. By halting these unlawful terminations, the court has protected both the integrity of public health research and the careers of those advancing it.”