A federal judge in New York dealt a sweeping legal defeat to the Trump administration on Thursday, ruling that its cancellation of more than $100 million in humanities grants was unconstitutional and permanently barring the Department of Government Efficiency from carrying out the terminations. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York found that the administration had violated the First Amendment’s free‑speech clause and the Fifth Amendment’s equal‑protection guarantee when it revoked over 1,400 congressionally‑funded National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Her opinion also delivered a sharp rebuke to DOGE’s reliance on artificial intelligence to identify grants for elimination, calling the agency’s process a “textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and several individual scholars and writers whose grants were abruptly terminated. McMahon issued a temporary block on the cancellations last year, and Thursday’s permanent injunction cements that halt. “The public interest favors permanent relief,” she wrote. “The public has a strong interest in ensuring that federal officials act within the bounds set by Congress and the Constitution.”
The grants were canceled in April 2025, three months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” and two months after a second order implementing DOGE’s “cost efficiency initiative.” Michael McDonald, then acting chairman of the NEH, sent letters to recipients informing them that their awards were being “repurpos[ed] … in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.” Government lawyers argued that the cuts were lawful measures to advance the administration’s priorities and reduce discretionary spending on programs linked to diversity, equity and inclusion. McMahon squarely rejected that argument, writing that while a new administration may pursue lawful funding priorities, “it has no license to suppress disfavored ideas.”
The judge’s opinion scrutinized how DOGE used ChatGPT to segregate grant projects deemed DEI‑related. One example she cited was an anthology titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union,” which officials flagged with the help of the AI tool. McMahon also dismissed the government’s contention that the constitutional problem was moot because ChatGPT, not a human official, had made the classification. “ChatGPT was the Government’s chosen instrument for purposes of this project, and DOGE’s use of AI to identify DEI‑related material neither excuses presumptively unconstitutional conduct nor gives the Government carte blanche to engage in it,” she wrote.
Attorneys and plaintiffs praised the decision. “This ruling is an important achievement in our effort to restore the NEH’s ability to fulfill the vital mission with which Congress charged it: helping to create and sustain ‘a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry’ through the humanities,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association. Yinka Ezekiel Onayemi, an attorney for the Authors Guild, called the cancellations “a direct assault on constitutional free speech and equal protection” and said the decision vindicates “brilliant academics, writers, and institutions doing work that is deeply important to our democracy.” He added that the ruling “reaffirms that Congress’s 60‑year‑old commitment to the humanities cannot be dismantled by an overreaching executive.”
The White House and the Department of Justice, which defended the administration in court, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday evening. It remained unclear whether the government will appeal. McMahon’s order makes clear, however, that the Trump administration’s effort to leverage DEI‑focused spending cuts against congressionally‑funded humanities work cannot proceed without constitutional justification — and that using AI as a screen for viewpoint discrimination offers no legal shield.