In signed court admissions filed last week in San Francisco federal court, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged they used keyword searches — not individual merit reviews — to mass-terminate more than 1,000 University of California research grants worth nearly $2 billion.

The admissions, filed in Thakur et al. v. Trump et al. (Case No. 3:25-cv-04737-RFL, N.D. Cal.), form the crux of a constitutional case brought by UC researchers who say the Trump administration systematically suppressed research it found politically disfavorable. Their attorneys are now pressing U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin to skip trial and issue a final order restoring the grants; a summary-judgment hearing is set for October 20. The agencies' own sworn stipulations — confirming they never reviewed individual grants on the merits — have put the administration in a legal corner it may not be able to argue its way out of.

The federal agencies named as defendants in the case — the NIH, EPA, and Department of Transportation, among others — admitted in newly filed court stipulations that they "did not terminate any grants based on alleged noncompliance with the terms of the grant," opting instead for "general criteria, rather than grant-specific assessment of each award's compliance, or performance," according to CalMatters, which first reported the admissions on July 21.

The agencies flagged grants using search terms including "health equity," "structural racism," "workforce diversity," and "sexual orientation," as well as terms related to vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19, according to CalMatters' review of the court filings. In some cases, agencies also used artificial intelligence tools to identify grants for termination review, per the same filings.

A UCSF researcher and a class-action

Lead plaintiff Neeta Thakur, a faculty researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, filed the class-action suit on June 4, 2025, on behalf of UC researchers across the system after federal agencies began canceling grants the previous year. The case is one of the most sweeping legal challenges to the Trump administration's rollback of federally funded research.

The scale of the cuts is stark: NIH alone suspended or canceled over 1,000 UC grants, including nearly 700 at UCLA. The Department of Transportation terminated six grants worth approximately $42 million — projects that mentioned "transportation equity," "disadvantaged communities," or "diversifying the transportation workforce." The Department of Energy, plaintiffs allege, terminated 283 grants at universities in states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, while leaving intact hundreds of grants at institutions in Republican-leaning states.

Three constitutional violations alleged

The legal team — which includes civil rights attorney Michael Bien and Caitlin Oppenheim, litigation director at the UC Office of the General Counsel — argues the admissions prove three simultaneous constitutional violations: First Amendment suppression of viewpoint-based research; retaliatory targeting of blue-state institutions; and an Appropriations Clause breach, because the terminated funding was never redirected to any other congressionally authorized use.

"[The agencies] identified the viewpoints they wanted to suppress, searched the grants they funded for those that expressed those viewpoints, and terminated those grants on that basis," the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote in court filings, according to the Associated Press.

The stakes for Bay Area institutions are severe. Termination of just three Department of Transportation grants led by a UC Davis professor caused 77 researchers to abandon 79 in-progress projects and forced the layoff or reassignment of more than 40 graduate and undergraduate research assistants, CalMatters reported. Plaintiffs' lawyers warned of "lifesaving cures that will never be developed" and "new understandings of diseases that will go unexplored" if the cuts stand permanently.

NIH policy traced to the top

The NIH's keyword-screening approach was authorized at the agency's highest level. Court documents show Acting NIH Director Dr. Matthew Memoli approved a restriction term in a February 28, 2025, email declaring: "NIH funds may not be used to support activities that are outside the revised scope of the award, including Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) research or DEI-related research training activities or programs."

Where the case stands

Judge Lin — a Biden appointee who has repeatedly issued preliminary injunctions forcing agencies to restore grants while the merits are litigated — is now weighing whether to issue a final ruling without a trial. The EPA is in settlement talks with plaintiffs to resolve its portion of the case, according to CalMatters and the Boston Globe. The NIH litigation continues.

With a summary-judgment hearing set for October 20, Thakur v. Trump is likely to produce one of the most consequential federal rulings on the limits of executive power over scientific research funding in a generation.