EDITORS' CORNER
Judge cites First Amendment violation, halting cancellations of DEI-related projects
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to cancel $175 million in National Endowment for the Humanities grants over their “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ties on Friday, citing a violation of the First Amendment.
Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the Trump administration engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it canceled the NEH grants. She ordered that the funds tied to the grants remain unallocated until a trial is held on the “merits” of the case.
The “defendants terminated the grants based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas,” the ruling states.
“This 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,’” it states.
One of the plaintiffs in the case, Professor Benjamin Holtzman, was awarded $60,000 as part of NEH’s Awards for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions program. The grant was canceled on April 3 after it was flagged for a “connection to DEI,” McMahon’s decision states.
The grant was intended to fund a book he is authoring about the resurgence of racist extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, in the 1970s and 1980s.
McMahon highlighted several other projects that were terminated “at least in part for their connection to DEI-related topics.”
For example, the Trump administration withdrew funding for an exhibit on the “history of indigenous tribes in South Carolina,” a documentary exploring the “Reconstruction-era Colfax Massacre of Black Americans,” and an effort to “process and digitize records of labor unions” primarily established by Jewish American immigrants.
“In short, the Government cannot take away monies previously allocated in an effort to sanitize from our history matters that do not conform to some preferred, triumphalist version of the past,” McMahon stated.
Further, the government cannot determine that these topics don’t align with taxpayer expectations about how federal funds should be spent because these matters are “divisive,” the judge stated.
The Department of Government Efficiency ordered the NEH grant cuts in April, aligning with its mission to curb government waste and enforce the president’s executive orders opposing DEI, Inside Higher Ed reported.
As a result, the federal agency terminated over 1,000 grants, many of which had been awarded to colleges and universities.
A humanities group called the Authors Guild, joined by several scholars, filed a lawsuit against the government in May “for terminating grants that had already been appropriated by Congress,” according to the Associated Press.
“The decision is 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,” Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, said in response to the ruling.
MORE: Kansas State U. closes LGBT ‘Spectrum Center’ following anti-DEI law
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: NEH logo; National Endowment for the Humanities/Youtube
