Manhattan Judge Orders DOGE to Restore More Than 1,400 NEH Grants
A federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that the cancellation of more than 1,400 National Endowment for the Humanities grants by the Elon Musk-led Department of Governmental Efficiency was unconstitutional, ordering the agency to rescind the cuts. The decision, issued by Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court in Manhattan, sided with plaintiffs in two lawsuits that argued the cancellations violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.
The grants at issue totaled more than $100 million and had been approved before the NEH was pulled into President Donald Trump’s “America First” cultural campaign. According to the reporting cited in the case, Michael McDonald, who had been appointed acting chair of the agency, cut most of the awards previously made under the Biden administration. The result, the New York Times reported, was widespread disruption for humanities organizations and projects across the country, with some forced to shut down entirely.
In her ruling, McMahon emphasized that the injury extended well beyond lost funding. “The injury is not limited to the loss of money,” she wrote. “It includes the disruption of protected expression, the interruption of ongoing research and publication, the cancellation or suspension of humanities programming, and the chilling effect caused by the government’s use of viewpoint-based and unauthorized criteria to terminate federal grants.”
The lawsuits were filed last year after the NEH chairman was dismissed and the agency was conscripted into the administration’s cultural agenda. They drew broader attention this spring after plaintiffs filed documents showing that two DOGE employees had used ChatGPT to flag grants they believed violated executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The ruling is likely to reverberate beyond the NEH itself. At stake is not only the fate of a single round of grants, but the degree to which federal cultural funding can be reshaped by political litmus tests without running afoul of constitutional protections.
