The AAMC filed an April 17 amicus brief (PDF) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, in Massachusetts v. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a case opposing the sudden termination of hundreds of research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Following the filing, AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, issued an April 17 statement that highlighted the agency’s unlawful terminations of research grants without warning or meaningful explanation and noted that “Across the country, the impact grows each day as promising research is halted, patients in clinical trials face the discontinuation of care, researchers lose their jobs, and graduate students have their admissions offers rescinded.”
The AAMC-organized brief was also signed by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, COGR, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
The amicus brief supports a motion for preliminary injunction filed on April 14 by the 16 plaintiff states seeking an order directing the NIH to reinstate grants unlawfully terminated based on a purported “change in agency priorities” and to cease delaying, suspending, or cancelling steps needed to review applications for future or ongoing NIH grant funding.
A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on May 9.