The Trump administration this week asked the nation’s highest bench to overturn a lower court ruling that said agencies’ termination of grants because they are “DEI” violated the First Amendment.
The Constitution’s protections against free speech generally prohibit the government from showing “viewpoint discrimination.” This case the administration has presented to the Supreme Court could determine whether that includes terminating grants a new administration does not like, which President Donald Trump directed en masse after returning to power last year.
The petition was filed by several University of California researchers whose grants from EPA, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities were terminated, some allegedly because of a nexus to diversity, equity or inclusion, known as DEI.
Three of the researchers saw their EPA grants terminated.