Overview
- The complaint, filed Sept. 16 in U.S. District Court in Northern California, names NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and asks a judge to halt keyword searches and restore affected grants.
- Plaintiffs say NIH used a list of about 235 search terms to flag, renegotiate, deny or terminate grants on topics such as diversity, gender, race and climate change.
- The suit cites an internal stipulation in which NIH’s head of extramural research acknowledged using search terms to identify grants that expressed viewpoints the agency no longer wished to subsidize.
- Researchers describe program officers urging removal of words like “equity,” “racism” or “climate change” to keep funding, a practice they say has led many investigators to change titles, stop applying, or lose projects outright.
- The case builds on earlier litigation that produced split rulings — a 2025 district court move to restore grants, a 2025 Supreme Court decision allowing some cuts, and a 2026 appeals court finding that terminations likely violated the First Amendment — and could shape whether the Supreme Court ultimately decides the dispute.