22 State Attorneys General Sue to Block Trump Admin Cuts to NIH Research Payments

The cuts were ordered late last week by the federal health agency.

A sign that reads "NIH Employees Only" posted near an entrance at the National Institutes of Health headquarters in Bethesda, Md., on Feb. 10, 2025. Attorneys general from 22 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and asked the court to block the proposed $4 billion a year budget cut in funding to biomedical researchers nationwide. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Democratic attorneys general of 22 states filed a lawsuit on Feb. 10 seeking to block billions of dollars in cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) ordered last week by the Trump administration.

Filed in federal court in Boston, their lawsuit is seeking to stop cuts to the NIH, including the reimbursement rate for the indirect costs to research institutions that are not directly related to a scientific project’s goals. Indirect costs include the costs of laboratory space, faculty, equipment, and infrastructure.

Accusing the NIH of exceeding its authority and violating federal law, the lawsuit is being led by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan.

“The effects of the Rate Change Notice will be immediate and devastating,” the lawsuit stated, referring to the Trump administration’s actions. “This agency action will result in layoffs, suspension of clinical trials, disruption of ongoing research programs, and laboratory closures.”

They argued further that the NIH would lose its ability to carry out “cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease,” adding that the cuts would also stop people from becoming “beneficiaries of research creating treatments, such as modern gene editing, vaccines such as flu vaccines, and cures for diseases like cancer, infectious diseases, and addiction.”

The state attorneys general said that if allowed to stand, the cuts would also result in layoffs, research disruptions, and laboratory closures.

The lawsuit is taking aim at an NIH directive issued last week that officials say would save more than $4 billion each year. The lawsuit specifically accuses the NIH of exceeding its authority by making the cuts apply retroactively to existing federal grants and of adopting the policy without following mandatory rulemaking procedures.

“The average indirect cost rate reported by NIH has averaged between 27% and 28% over time,” the NIH stated in a notice published on Feb. 7. “And many organizations are much higher—charging indirect rates of over 50% and in some cases over 60%.”

The NIH said it had spent more than $35 billion in fiscal year 2023 on grants awarded to researchers at more than 2,500 institutions. About $9 billion of that money went to covering overheads, or indirect costs, the NIH said.

In a post on social media on Feb. 7, the NIH said that under the previous system, three schools—Harvard University, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University—had charged an indirect cost rate of more than 60 percent.

Harvard released a statement on Feb. 10 that said the cuts would “slash funding and cut research activity at Harvard and nearly every research university” in the nation.

President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have been pushing to slash trillions of dollars of what they say are wasteful spending, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.

“Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60% of research award money for ‘overhead’?” Musk wrote in a post on social media platform X on Feb. 7, responding to the NIH. “What a ripoff!”

Aside from the 22 attorneys general, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the NIH directive should be stopped, claiming that it would “derail major breakthroughs by forcing research institutions ... to now scramble to make up this massive shortfall, almost certainly forcing layoffs across the country.”

She said the NIH helps prepare the United States “for pandemics and other health threats, and ensure the U.S. continues to be the global leader in biomedical research.”

The Association of American Medical Colleges was similarly critical, claiming in a Feb. 8 statement that the directive would “diminish the nation’s research capacity” and that “lights in labs nationwide will literally go out” if it stands. The group urged Trump to not go through with the directive.

Reuters contributed to this report.