Mass Termination of Humanities Grants Deemed Unlawful, Enjoined

The Trump administration’s mass termination of more than 1,400 grants previously awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities was unlawful and unconstitutional, a federal judge said.

The terminations brought about by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency weren’t authorized by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said Thursday.

The terminations also violated the First Amendment’s free-speech clause and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause, Judge Colleen McMahon said in the 143-page opinion. She permanently blocked the government from enforcing the terminations, saying they were contrary to Congress’s purpose in creating the NEH.

The terminations represented over $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds awarded to scholars, writers, and others. They targeted projects DOGE said implicated President Donald Trump’s executive orders on diversity, equity, and inclusion and gender identity.

The lead DOGE investigators admitted during depositions to using ChatGPT to search for grants related in any way to DEI. They used the artificial intelligence tool to identify grants for termination.

The notices, signed by the NEH chairperson, went out in early April 2025 but they’d been drafted and sent by DOGE, which lacked the authority to do so, McMahon said.

Instead of carrying out the NEH grantmaking scheme Congress created by statute, DOGE displaced it to carry out the president’s policy goals, the judge said. By doing so, DOGE moved beyond the constitutional constraints of executive power, she said.

The terminations violated the First Amendment because they targeted speech based on the viewpoint expressed, such as projects exploring Black and Jewish history, McMahon said.

DOGE also violated the equal protection clause by using “the mere presence of particular, protected characteristics to disqualify grants from continued funding.”

“Whatever lawful priorities the Executive Branch may pursue in administering federal grants, it may not implement those priorities by making race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or sex the determinative factor for its termination decisions,” McMahon wrote.

Three of the country’s leading scholarly associations in the humanities and a New York nonprofit group consisting of 81 scholarly organizations sued the government challenging the terminations.

The suit was consolidated for resolution with one brought by a national nonprofit membership association representing professional writers whose grants and awards were terminated.

McMahon previously blocked the terminations in July 2025, pending trial.

Fairmark Partners LLP and Jacobson Lawyers Group PLLC represent the plaintiffs. The US Justice Department represents the government.

The case is Authors Guild v. Nat’l Endowment for the Humanities, S.D.N.Y., No. 25-3923, 5/7/26.