A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $100 million in humanities grants was unconstitutional and permanently halted the terminations. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ordered the government to stop the grant cancellations, finding that the administration violated constitutional protections when it cut funding for projects tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The ruling sided with the Authors Guild and other plaintiffs who sued the administration and the National Endowment for the Humanities after officials canceled more than 1,400 humanities grants approved by Congress. McMahon wrote that the case involved unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination tied to DEI classifications, and she criticized the role officials played in using artificial intelligence to identify which projects to cut.
In the decision, McMahon permanently barred the administration from terminating the grants and said the Department of Government Efficiency did not have the lawful authority to end the funding. She also rejected arguments from government lawyers that the cancellations were legal steps taken to implement President Donald Trump’s directives, including efforts to reduce discretionary spending and eliminate grants linked to diversion, equity and inclusion.
Government lawyers had argued that the grants were canceled through lawful implementation of presidential priorities, describing the terminations as moves to carry out Trump’s instructions and cut certain categories of spending. The White House and the Department of Justice, which defended against the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday, and it was not immediately clear whether the administration planned to appeal.
McMahon’s ruling emphasized how officials classified grant projects as DEI and how the government used ChatGPT as a tool in the process, according to the decision described in the case reporting. The judge scrutinized an example in which officials, using the AI platform, labeled an anthology titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union” as DEI-related.
The judge also wrote that the government’s position—that the unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, if any, was the product of ChatGPT rather than government action—did not resolve the constitutional problem. McMahon wrote that “ChatGPT was the Government’s chosen instrument for purposes of this project,” and she said DOGE’s use of AI to target DEI-related material did not “excuse presumptively unconstitutional conduct” or give the government “carte blanche” to engage in it.
In describing the scope and context of the cancellations, the judge said many of the canceled grants were awarded during the Biden administration and that only about 40 grants from that period were spared from the cuts. The cancellations were announced in April 2025, three months after Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” and after another executive order in February 2025 establishing DOGE’s “cost efficiency initiative.”
The case included letters sent to grant recipients, including a letter from Michael McDonald, then acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, informing recipients that their grants were canceled. In one letter dated April 1, 2025 to an organization, McDonald wrote that the NEH had “reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”
McMahon said the government violated First Amendment rights by suppressing disfavored ideas and described the public interest as favoring permanent relief. “The public interest favors permanent relief,” she wrote, adding that the public has a strong interest in ensuring federal officials act within the bounds set by Congress and the Constitution.
Plaintiffs and advocacy groups hailed the ruling. In a joint statement, groups that included the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association said the decision helped restore the NEH’s ability to fulfill Congress’s mandate for the humanities, and Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the ruling was an achievement in efforts to restore NEH’s mission.
Yinka Ezekiel Onayemi, an attorney for the Authors Guild, said the grant cancellations were “a direct assault on constitutional free speech and equal protection” and characterized the ruling as reaffirming that Congress’s commitment to the humanities cannot be dismantled by an overreaching executive.