On June 4th, 2025, a group of six University of California faculty and other researchers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against the Trump Administration on behalf of all UC researchers whose previously approved agency grants were terminated pursuant to Executive Orders or other directives of President Trump, as implemented through the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”).
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that these grant terminations violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers, the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, and the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process, as well as statutes that govern agencies’ missions and grantmaking and the Administrative Procedure Act. As detailed in the Complaint, these abrupt cancellations of already awarded grants “ignored or contradicted the purposes for which Congress created the granting agencies and appropriated funds, and dispensed with the regular procedures and due process afforded grantees under the Administrative Procedure Act, in implementing the Trump Administration’s political ‘cost-cutting’ agenda and ideological purity campaign.”
Read a copy of the Press Release on the filing of the lawsuit.
Update: On June 23, 2025, the court provisionally certified two classes and entered a preliminary injunction. The first class is the “Equity Termination Class,” which essentially encompasses anyone whose grants were terminated for DEI reasons. Second is the “Form Termination Class,” which includes anyone whose grants were terminated “by means of a form termination notice that does not provide a grant-specific explanation for the termination that states the reason for the change to the original award decision and considers the reliance interests at stake.”
The preliminary injunction orders the government to reinstate all grants to UC researchers included in either class that were terminated by EPA, NSF, and NEH (the agencies that terminated the named plaintiffs’ grants). By June 30, the government must report on the steps it is taking to comply with the injunction. The parties will appear before the court for a case management conference on July 2 at 11:00am.
You can find the court’s order assessing the claims and certifying the class here, and the preliminary injunction here.