Justice Barrett splits court on NIH grant funding case
By Noah Feldman / Bloomberg Opinion
When it comes to lawsuits against the Trump administration for unlawfully terminating government grants and contracts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has become the deciding voice at the Supreme Court.
In an important decision concerning the National Institutes of Health’s termination of grants related to gender, DEI and covid, Barrett held that grant recipients are permitted to sue in federal district court to challenge the legality of the NIH’s actions. But she also ruled that the recipients must pursue claims for monetary relief in the separate, specialized Court of Federal Claims if they win in district court.
Barrett’s decision hinges on a legal technicality that was rejected by the other eight justices. The court’s three liberals, plus Chief Justice John Roberts, concluded that the district court should be able to both resolve the suit and award the money if the NIH’s actions violated the law. The court’s other four conservatives thought the entire lawsuit belonged in the Court of Federal Claims. By voting with the liberals to hold that the district court could decide the legality of the NIH’s actions and with the conservatives to hold that only the claims court can restore money owed, Barrett cast the deciding fifth vote in both parts of the case. The result — in practice, a compromise ruling — is wholly her own.
To be clear, Barrett is not a compromiser by nature. Her opinion isn’t meant as a compromise, nor is it written in conciliatory terms. Instead, the brief opinion reads like a piece of legal craftsmanship: legally defensible and logically maddening.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-justice-barrett-splits-court-on-nih-grant-funding-case/
= new reply since forum marked as read
