UCLA Research Grants Cut by Trump’s NSF Must Be Restored (2)

Millions of dollars in grant funding to University of California researchers suspended by the federal government’s National Science Foundation must be restored, a federal judge ordered Tuesday evening.

The order from Judge Rita F. Lin comes after the Trump administration demanded Friday that the University of California at Los Angeles pay a $1 billion fine to restore federal research funding from NSF and other agencies. California Gov. Gavin Newsom had said the university wouldn’t pay.

The NSF took aim at grant funding for UCLA researchers in letters on July 30 and Aug. 1, saying it was suspending the institution’s grants following an order by Lin in June that paused the government’s effort to terminate research grants to the University of California.

Justice Department lawyer Jason Altabet argued during the Tuesday hearing that there’s a distinction between the agency’s “suspension” of grants and the “termination” Lin had paused. But Lin found no difference.

“NSF’s actions violate the Preliminary Injunction,” Lin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said in her Tuesday order. “Though there may be situations where a ‘termination’ and ‘suspension’ are not the same thing, there is no principled difference between a ‘termination’ and the immediate, indefinite, and ‘final’ ‘suspension’ of funding in this context.”

Lin also noted that her prior order had enjoined NSF from terminating grants without providing grant-specific information. Altabet had said that the NSF wasn’t taking a “granular” look at the cuts or evaluating their impacts grant-by-grant.

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky noted at the hearing the same “disastrous effects” of the latest suspension are being felt by student- and faculty-researchers, not to mention the research they’re doing.

The terminations violated separation of powers, free speech rights, due process, and the Administrative Procedure Act, among other laws, the June 4 complaint said.

Lin ordered the parties to file a joint report by Aug. 19, confirming funding had been restored.

$324 Million in Grants Slashed

On June 23, Lin agreed to the researchers’ request to pause hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding cuts while their class action moves forward over the lost grants.

The several-year grants that support the work of the six UC researcher plaintiffs were “suddenly terminated” without any explanation, after Trump started issuing executive orders in January, said Lin in her June order. That included more than $324 million in grants to the University of California that have been slashed since April, she said.

A federal appeals court seemed receptive at a July 31 hearing to the UC researchers’ argument that the Trump administration’s cutting of hundreds of millions in grants violated the First Amendment.

The administration is asking the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to pause Judge Lin’s injunction blocking the government’s cuts while the full appeal on the merits plays out.

Chemerinsky, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, and Farella Braun & Martel LLP represent the researchers.

The case is Thakur v. Trump, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-04737, order 8/12/25.