The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
U.S. District Judge William Young claimed the cuts ignored long-held government standards and amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
However, Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket from April that allowed cuts to teacher training programs to go forward, one of multiple recent victories for the president at the nation's highest court. The order shows that district judges shouldn’t be hearing those cases at all, but rather sending them to federal claims court, he argued.
“Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize—as members of this Court have done—that paeans to 'diversity' often conceal invidious racial discrimination,” he wrote.
