Federal agencies defending the Trump administration’s University of California research grant cancellations have conceded the factual core of the researchers’ strongest surviving constitutional claim: awards were screened through keywords and perceived viewpoints, then terminated without individualized reviews of compliance or performance.
The admissions are especially consequential because a federal appeals court has already narrowed one route for challenging the cancellations while preserving the First Amendment case against viewpoint-based funding decisions. The researchers are now asking US District Judge Rita Lin to grant summary judgment and permanently reverse the terminations without holding a trial.
The challenged grants are collectively worth nearly $2 billion, according to the plaintiffs and reporting by CalMatters.
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Stipulations covering the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and National Institutes of Health state that the agencies used search terms, keywords, or phrases to identify grants for review.
The agencies agreed that they selected grants that “expressed, or were presumed to express, viewpoints disfavored by the Administration.” They also stipulated that general criteria replaced grant-specific assessments and that the awards were not cancelled because recipients had violated their grant terms.
In May, the appeals court upheld preliminary relief for researchers whose grants were terminated over perceived DEI, DEIA, or environmental-justice viewpoints. The court said those researchers were likely to succeed on their First Amendment claim because the cancellations appeared aimed at suppressing views the government opposed.
The same ruling reversed preliminary relief for a separate class challenging generic form-letter terminations under the Administrative Procedure Act. The Ninth Circuit found that those claims were essentially contractual disputes over grant payments and likely belonged outside federal district court.
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The less visible admission concerns what happened to the cancelled funding. Five agencies stipulated that the grants used money Congress had appropriated for grant-making and that the terminated amounts were not redirected into other grant programs. The plaintiffs argue that the executive branch withheld money that Congress had directed agencies to use for research grants, allegedly violating the constitutional separation of powers.
The Department of Energy made a separate admission involving 283 grants terminated in October 2025. DOE stipulated that the projects were selected solely because they were located or performed in states classified as politically Democratic, while approximately 340 grants in Republican or swing states were left intact.
DOE further agreed that the distinction was not based on program objectives, costs, performance, statutory requirements, or any rational connection between a project’s location and the department’s priorities. The plaintiffs are using those admissions to support equal-protection and political-retaliation claims.
The Department of Transportation identified six grants worth approximately $42 million for termination because their projects addressed transportation equity, disadvantaged communities, workforce diversity, or environmental justice, according to CalMatters’ review of the filings.
Three UC Davis-led grants supported 79 projects involving 77 researchers. The plaintiffs said the cancellations forced the projects to stop and left administrators seeking replacement funding for more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants.
NIH used terms including “health equity,” “structural racism,” “sexual orientation,” and “work force diversity” when screening grants. CalMatters reported that more than 1,000 NIH grants across the UC system were suspended or cancelled, including nearly 700 at UCLA, although UCLA previously estimated that closer to 500 grants had been affected.
A hearing is scheduled for October 20 at 10 a.m. in the Northern District of California.
