President Donald Trump on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to slash hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, the Associated Press reports.
The Justice Department asserted that a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with the president’s priorities.
U.S. District Judge William Young found that the sudden cancellations ignored long-held government rules and standards, and also said the cuts amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
An appeals court left the ruling in place.
The ruling came in lawsuits filed by 16 attorneys general, public-health advocacy groups and some affected scientists, and it addressed only a fraction of the hundreds of NIH research projects that have been cut.
Trump’s appeal also targets nearly two dozen other cases over funding.
