A federal judge in New York ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $100 million in humanities funding to scholars, authors, research groups and other organizations was unconstitutional and that the Department of Government Effectiveness did not have the authority to terminate funding.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan sided with the Writers Guild, several other groups and some of the defunders in suing DOGE and the National Endowment for the Humanities. McMahon permanently banned the government from ending funding and criticized DOGE for using artificial intelligence to cancel funding.
Administration lawyers argue that the cuts to more than 1,400 congressionally approved appropriations are legitimate moves to implement President Donald Trump’s directive to eliminate appropriations related to transfer, equity and inclusion and reduce discretionary spending under government priorities.
The White House and the Justice Department, which are defending the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment late Thursday. It’s unclear whether an appeal is planned.
McMahon said the government violated the equal protection rights of the First and Fifth Amendments and that DOGE had no legal authority to cancel the funding. For example, she wrote, when officials eliminate funding based on DEI, it’s a “textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”
“The public interest favors permanent relief,” McMahon wrote in the ruling. “The public has a strong interest in ensuring that federal officials act within the bounds of Congress and the Constitution.”
Several groups suing the government, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, welcomed the decision in a joint statement.
“This ruling is an important achievement in our efforts to restore NEH’s ability to fulfill the important mission assigned to it by Congress: to help create and sustain ‘a climate that encourages freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry’ through the humanities,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association.
Authors Guild lawyer Yinka Ezekiel Onayemi called the defunding “a direct attack on the freedom of expression and equal protection of the Constitution.”
“We are pleased with the court’s ruling, which vindicates our clients: the work of outstanding scholars, authors and institutions is important to our democracy,” Onayemi said in a statement. “It also reaffirms that Congress’s 60-year commitment to the humanities cannot be undermined by an overreaching executive branch.”
The judge scrutinized how government officials classified grant programs as DEI and used ChatGPT to target those programs with funding cuts. In one case, she said, officials used an artificial intelligence platform to flag an anthology called “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Stories by Soviet Jewish Writers” as DEI. She cited many other examples.
McMahon also dismissed the government’s argument that there was no constitutional issue because any classification of views was done by ChatGPT, not the government.
“ChatGPT was the government’s tool of choice for this project, and DOGE’s use of artificial intelligence to identify DEI-related materials neither excuses putative constitutional violations nor gives the government carte blanche to engage in them,” she wrote.
The elimination of the grants was announced in April 2025, three months after Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Aggressive and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferences.” In February 2025, Trump issued another executive order implementing DOGE’s “Cost Efficiency Initiative.”
Michael McDonald, then acting president of the National Endowment for the Humanities, sent letters to recipients informing them that their grants were being cancelled.
“Given that NEH is redirecting its funding allocations in new directions to advance the President’s agenda, NEH has reasonable grounds to terminate your funding,” he wrote in an April 1, 2025, letter to one organization.
The judge wrote that many of the canceled grants were issued during the Biden administration, and only about 40 grants awarded by that administration were not cut.
McMahon wrote that while the new administration may pursue legitimate funding priorities, “it does not have the power to suppress unpopular ideas.”
In a temporary injunction issued last year that defunded funds that raised First Amendment and other issues, the judge said, “Defendants terminated grants based on the recipients’ views in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas.”
