Three professors from the California State University system have sued the National Science Foundation after the agency canceled their grant funding. The lawsuit, filed Friday, challenges terminations made after Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz highlighted the studies in a report.
The grants had been approved through a merit-based review process. Cruz flagged the projects for including terms such as “equity,” “inclusion” and “climate justice,” and the NSF adopted his methodology in 2025 to identify grants for termination. The affected CSU projects addressed climate science education, teacher preparation and participation in STEM fields.
Kunyu Ching, an attorney with Lawyers for Good Government, which represents the professors, said federal grants should be awarded based on the quality of proposals rather than the political views of elected officials. Ching said the researchers completed the government’s review process but lost funding because of the viewpoints their work was presumed to represent.
The complaint alleges that the NSF violated the researchers’ First Amendment rights, as well as the Fifth Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act and constitutional limits on executive authority. It asks the court to provide injunctive relief and bar the agency from canceling other grants based on researchers’ political or academic viewpoints.
Sources: Inside Higher Ed.