On Friday, a US federal judge in New York issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the government from mass-cancelling of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants, finding that President Donald Trump’s administration likely violated the First Amendment by rescinding NEH grants based on viewpoint discrimination.
The lawsuit, brought by the Authors Guild and several affected scholars, challenges the Trump administration’s April 2025 terminations of at least 1,400 NEH grants.
The plaintiffs allege that the cancellations disproportionately targeted projects focused on equity and historical injustice. Many were awarded during the Biden administration and included works addressing “environmental justice,” “gender ideology,” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Judge Colleen McMahon of the US District Court in the Southern District of New York stated in the order that “the defendants terminated the grants, based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas… [T]his is most evident by the citation in the Termination Notices to executive orders purporting to combat ‘Radical Indoctrination’ and ‘Radical…DEI Programs,’ and to further ‘Biological Truth.’”
According to the ruling, one terminated grant involved a professor’s book on the Ku Klux Klan’s resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s, which the NEH flagged as being tied to DEI. McMahon noted that several other history-focused projects were similarly canceled due to their perceived connection to diversity themes.
While she acknowledged the administration’s authority to shift funding priorities toward patriotic programming, McMahon emphasized that “agency discretion does not include discretion to violate the First Amendment. Nor does [it] give the Government the right to edit history.”
The injunction blocks the NEH from withdrawing funding or reallocating the affected grants while litigation continues. The ruling preserves the funding status quo and is intended to prevent irreparable harm to in-progress scholarly work.
Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, praised the decision as “a heartening reminder that courts remain a bastion against government overreach and will step in to protect fundamental rights and liberties when they are blatantly threatened.”
McMahon ordered that any monies associated with the plaintiffs’ grants not be re-obligated until a trial on the merits of the case is held.
