A preliminary injunction temporarily halted the mass cancellation of the grants by the US government
Authors Guild members have notched a win in their bid to stop National Endowment for the Humanities grants from being cancelled by the US government, reported the Associated Press.
The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York’s Judge Colleen McMahon issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily halted the termination of the grants that had been awarded to the members. She also ordered that grant funds should not be re-obligated until a trial on the case’s merits is conducted.
The Authors Guild had filed the class action against the NEH and the Department of Government Efficiency in May. McMahon said in a statement published by AP News that the defendants had “terminated the grants based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas.”
She pointed to how termination notices cited executive orders “purporting to combat ‘Radical Indoctrination’ and ‘Radical … DEI Programs,’ and to further ‘Biological Truth’.” The government cancelled the grant for a book on the Ku Klux Klan re-emergence in the 1970s and 1980s on the grounds that it was linked to DEI; a similar reasoning was used to terminate the grants for other history-related projects.
“Far be it from this Court to deny the right of the Administration to focus NEH priorities on American history and exceptionalism as the year of our semiquincentennial approaches. Such refocusing is ordinarily a matter of agency discretion. But agency discretion does not include discretion to violate the First Amendment. Nor does not give the Government the right to edit history,” McMahon said in a statement published by AP News.
The judge noted that in some cases, grants were withdrawn only because they had been given under the Biden administration. Nonetheless, McMahon clarified in a statement published by AP News that she had issued the injunction specifically “to maintain the status quo until we can decide whether Plaintiffs are entitled to ultimate relief” and nothing more.
In a statement published by AP News, Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger lauded McMahon’s ruling as “a heartening reminder that courts remain a bastion against government overreach and will step in to protect fundamental rights and liberties when they are blatantly threatened.”
McMahon had previously shot down the American Council of Learned Societies’ temporary injunction request along with several lawsuit claims.
