A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s choice to cut more than $100 million in grants for humanities programs amounted to a “a textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination” and found the cuts made by President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency unlawful. The ruling awarded a victory to advocacy groups and grant recipients who brought the suit.
As part of the Trump administration’s war on diversity, which critics have denounced as racist, Trump gave his top 2024 campaign donor Elon Musk and other DOGE officials power to slash federal programs at will. The grants in question, administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities, gained attention earlier this year after deposition videos went viral showing DOGE employees stumbling in their efforts to define diversity, equity and inclusion and to explain why some grants were flagged for removal under the guise of ending DEI.
In a 143-page ruling, Judge Colleen McMahon rebuked the administration for instituting the cuts on a discriminatory basis and for attempting to avoid accountability by crediting artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT for the decisions.
McMahon highlighted one case, discussed in the deposition videos, in which a DOGE staffer offered his take on why a project by Jewish women who survived Nazi persecution was axed:
Revoking a federal grant solely because it discusses and illuminates historical injustice against a minority group is plainly viewpoint discrimination. But, according to the Government, the project was “#DEI” because it “explores Jewish writers” and “highlight[s] themes of witnessing, memory, and resilience.” The Government, again using ChatGPT, also classified as DEI a project examining graphic narratives created by Jewish women survivors of Nazi persecution in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.
McMahon used a reference to comedian Flip Wilson to discredit the administration’s ChatGPT defense:
That argument brings to mind, for someone of my generation, the great comedian Flip Wilson, whose character “Geraldine Jones” would excuse her behavior by saying, “The devil made me do it.” That excuse did not work for Geraldine Jones, and it does not work for the Government. There is no distinction to be drawn here between the Government and ChatGPT.
The Trump administration’s argument that it could not have discriminated because an AI tool made the decisions as to which grants to cut is precisely why AI experts have warned about the need for more transparency into companies’ algorithms. McMahon didn’t buy that defense, and her ruling permanently barred the administration from terminating the grants.
“[T]he public interest favors permanent relief. The public has a strong interest in ensuring that federal officials act within the bounds set by Congress and the Constitution,” she wrote.
The Justice Department, which defended the cuts, did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
The post Judge rules DOGE cuts to humanities grants unconstitutional, discriminatory appeared first on MS NOW.
