A federal District Court in Massachusetts (Brian E. Murphy) has preliminarily enjoined the Department of Defense from imposing a 15% overhead cap on research grants. “The Government has, for the fourth time, purported to announce a policy that has consistently been deemed unlawful, without acknowledgment of its apparent illegality and without any attempt to structure the policy in a manner that fulfills the established requirements of law,” the Court said in the introduction to its opinion.
Prior cases in Massachusetts have enjoined the cap on grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. The Court found that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their contentions that the new guidelines violate the Administrative Procedures Act because they conflict with governing regulations, conflict with duly enacted statutes, and are arbitrary and capricious.
The case was brought by the American Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, the American Council on Education, and 12 universities that house significant scientific study and innovation supported by the DOD. (Association of American Universities v. Department of Defense, CA No. 25-11740, 7/18/25.)
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