NIH Agrees to Evaluate and Complete Review on Stalled Scientific Grant Applications

Parties resolve claims on behalf of applicants harmed by unlawful directives

December 29, 2025 7:00 pm

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Mark Sheridan, media@aclum.org

BOSTON — Grant applications that were arbitrarily frozen, denied, or withdrawn by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will now receive individual evaluations under an agreement announced today in a lawsuit brought on behalf of scientists whose careers were upended by unlawful NIH policy directives. Under a stipulated dismissal, the NIH has agreed to use its standard process to render decisions on the plaintiffs’ stalled applications, which address urgent public health issues, including HIV prevention, Alzheimer’s disease, LGBTQ+ health, and sexual violence.

"This agreement... ensures that each grant application from the plaintiffs and their members receives a good-faith, scientifically rigorous review without reference to the unlawful directives.”

—

Jessie Rossman, legal director, ACLU of Massachusetts

“This agreement allows my grant application, and many others, to move forward for review after an arbitrary and destructive freeze. I’m building a career around studying the aging brain, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease and alcohol use, said plaintiff Nikki Maphis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New Mexico. “I look forward to having my funding proposal evaluated fairly so that I can continue contributing to urgent and unmet public health needs.”

“Researchers deserve to have their work evaluated on its merits, not sidelined by political interference,” said Olga Akselrod, senior counsel, ACLU Racial Justice Program. “NIH has now agreed to review the stalled applications individually and in good faith, without applying the unlawful policy directives.”

The agreement also sets clear deadlines for the applications to be reviewed and decided on, based on when each application was originally submitted. Importantly, the agreement confirms that the close of the Federal Fiscal Year 2025 will not prevent the NIH from reviewing or awarding any applications.

"This agreement marks another important step toward restoring trust in our public institutions," said Kenneth Parreno, counsel at Protect Democracy. "By committing to evaluate these NIH grant applications on their scientific merit, not on political ideology, the federal government is taking a necessary step to ensure that facts, evidence, and the rule of law guide the decisions that shape our nation's health and innovation."

"NIH's unprecedented actions to implement unlawful directives earlier this year put many scientists' careers in limbo, including hundreds of members of the American Public Health Association and the UAW union. This agreement allows them to move forward after months of uncertainty and ensures that each grant application from the plaintiffs and their members receives a good-faith, scientifically rigorous review without reference to the unlawful directives,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Protect Democracy, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP filed a lawsuit challenging the abrupt cancellations and stalled application of grants on behalf of individual researchers, along with the American Public Health Association (APHA); the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW); and Ibis Reproductive Health.

This agreement does not impact the first phase of the case, in which the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts found NIH’s directives to be unlawful and vacated grant terminations. In August, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the district court likely lacked jurisdiction to review the termination of research grants by the NIH. However, the Supreme Court declined to stay the district court’s conclusion that the directives violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). The District Court’s decision is on appeal and oral argument will be heard in the First Circuit Court of Appeals on January 6, 2026.

The agreement can be found online here.

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APHA v. NIH

In April 2025, researchers, along with American Public Health Association (APHA), the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), and Ibis Reproductive Health, filed a lawsuit challenging the abrupt cancellation of research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. The grants were cancelled after NIH staff were directed to eliminate research on disfavored topics and populations without clear guidance or justification – jeopardizing critical medical discoveries that drive advancements in diagnosing, preventing, and treating life-threatening diseases. In February, the NIH began a reckless purge of federal grants, halting application processes midstream, and stripping funding opportunities from its website. Hundreds of research projects — many of which had been underway for years, representing thousands of hours of work and billions of dollars in investment — were abruptly cancelled without a scientifically valid explanation. NIH attempted to justify the first wave of its sweeping grant cancellations by vaguely citing connections to “gender identity” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), without defining these terms or explaining how they apply to the terminated research. As a result, critical studies addressing urgent health disparities — designed to develop prioritized strategies for populations at the highest risk of disease — were indiscriminately wiped out. This eradication of research expanded to include research on “vaccine hesitancy,” “COVID,” and any research being conducted or involving labs located in South Africa and China. This unprecedented purge marks a sharp departure from the NIH’s longstanding approach, in which funding decisions have been guided by congressional mandates, regulatory requirements, and scientific expertise. NIH grants are among the most competitive and rigorously vetted research funding opportunities in the world, undergoing multiple layers of expert review. Most applications submitted are rejected, and until the time of filing, terminations had been exceedingly rare. Training grants, some of which are designed to facilitate the entry of researchers from historically underrepresented groups into the biomedical field as mandated by Congress, were also canceled, jeopardizing opportunities for the best and the brightest of the next generation of scientists, particularly harming racial and ethnic minorities, women, people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those from rural communities. The researchers, along with APHA, which has 23,000 public health professional members, UAW, a union of 120,000 workers including graduate students, postdocs, researchers, and faculty in higher education, and Ibis Reproductive Health, a global research organization, are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Protect Democracy, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the NIH, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The lawsuit claims the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by acting arbitrarily and without justification, failing to provide scientific reasoning or follow proper procedures. NIH also exceeded its legal authority by disregarding congressional mandates to fund health disparities research and address the underrepresentation of certain groups in the medical field, and by failing to comply with grant termination regulations. Additionally, the lawsuit argues that NIH’s actions violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections by canceling grants based on vague and undefined criteria. The lawsuit seeks to restore funding to researchers whose grants were unlawfully terminated and to prevent the NIH from continuing to cut awards in this arbitrary and unlawful manner.