Federal Judge Rules DOGE Grant Terminations at Humanities Endowment Unlawful

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Department of Government Efficiency used race, gender and other protected characteristics to carry out the largest mass termination of federal grants in the history of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon declared the terminations unlawful, concluded that DOGE staffers lacked authority to make those decisions and blocked the administration from carrying them out. The judge wrote that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to or resemble the NEH’s ordinary grant-review process.

The judge specifically addressed the decision to cut funding for grants related to the Holocaust because the project focused on women who survived Nazi persecution. She noted the current resurgence of antisemitism and called the action deeply troubling.

ABC News has previously reported on depositions at the center of the case in which two former DOGE staffers described using ChatGPT and DEI keywords to carry out the cuts. The staffers had backgrounds in tech and finance and had not worked in government before joining DOGE last year.

In depositions released in March the two employees defended the effort to cut what they called useless agencies as part of an attempt to reduce the federal deficit. One staffer said he had no regrets about people losing income because reducing the deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero was more important.

When asked whether the cuts had reduced the federal deficit the same staffer replied that they had not. The staffers originally identified grants for possible termination based on whether they included certain words such as DEI, DEIA, Equity, Inclusion, BIPOC, LGBTQ though final decisions rested with agency heads.

Reaction to the Ruling The nonprofits that sued over the cuts, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, welcomed the ruling. The president of the American Council of Learned Societies said the humanities are not a luxury and that the decision honors the will of Congress.

The organizations filed suit after the administration directed agencies to place DEI staff on leave and shutter related programs shortly after the new administration took office in January 2025 and created DOGE.