In April, NSF issued a new statement of priorities asserting that grant awards “should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.” “Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities,” the agency added. NSF also noted grants related to environmental justice and the study of disinformation would also fall short of the agency’s objectives under the Trump administration. Mass cancellations of previously awarded grants followed. In June, a group of unions and higher education associations — including the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Association of University Professors — sued NSF for the canceled NSF research grants.

They counted 1,600 canceled grants amounting to over $1 billion funding, including many that aimed at broadening participation of women, underrepresented groups and those with disabilities in scientific and technical fields. Commonly appearing typos and boilerplate language in many of the termination notices to researchers showed the mass, automatic nature of the cancellations.

“NSF afforded recipients of terminated grants no advance notice, and indeed no process whatsoever, before the terminations,” the complaint stated.

Plaintiffs argued that NSF’s anti-DEI directive and cancellations violated the law as well as the constitutional principles of separation of powers and due process. Among other things, plaintiffs said the grants carried out NSF’s “statutory directive to support an increase in the participation of underrepresented populations in STEM fields, including women, minorities, and people with disabilities.”

In her ruling Wednesday, Cobb, a Biden appointee, wrote that her court likely had jurisdiction to decide if NSF’s anti-DEI policies could be applied to future grants. But retroactively restoring the grants that had been canceled, as the plaintiffs had requested, would likely need to be handled by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Among other precedents, she cited last month’s Supreme Court ruling in a case against the National Institutes of Health over similar DEI-related grant cancellations at that agency. While the top court declined to block a district court’s order that struck down the NIH’s anti-DEI guidance, it said the plaintiffs must seek relief for the canceled grants in federal claims court.

Read the full article about the canceled NSF research grants by Ben Unglesbee at Higher Ed Dive.