A federal judge in New York has blocked the Trump administration’s cancellation of $175 million in National Endowment for the Humanities grants allegedly related to diversity, equity and inclusion; gender ideology; or “environmental justice.”
In a ruling issued Friday, Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, said the agency violated the First Amendment in ordering the cancellation of grants “based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas.”
The Department of Government Efficiency ordered the mass grant and personnel cuts at the NEH in April as part of its mandate to eliminate government waste and uphold the president’s executive orders against DEI. The NEH canceled more than 1,000 grants—many of which supported work at colleges and universities—and sent termination notices to 65 percent of the agency’s employees.
The Authors Guild and several scholars sued the NEH and DOGE in May, arguing that the mass cuts illegally targeted projects related to DEI and historical injustices.
Last week Judge McMahon determined that the plaintiffs “demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim” and ordered the government to release funding for the impacted grants while litigation continues.
“The American story simply cannot be told by suppressing all conversation about such matters—including especially conversation about past injustices that some, perhaps many, of us would rather forget,” she wrote. “But for well over two centuries Americans have shown, again and again, that we can take a hard look at ourselves without falling apart. Indeed, not a few Americans believe that the most exceptional thing about this great country is the fact that we do not forget those things, but explore them and learn from them—even as we march ever onward toward the day when Jefferson’s stirring creedal words ‘all men are created equal’ can finally be said to be true.”
The ruling continued, “We are exceptional because the First Amendment prohibits our Government from acting, directly or indirectly, to control speech even when the Government doesn’t agree with that speech. It ill behooves Defendants to undermine that critically important aspect of our exceptionalism.”
