Federal Judges Block NIH, DOE Plans to Cap Funding
Published April 21, 2025
By AACOM Government Relations
Federal Policy
Higher Education
OME Advocate
Osteopathic Research
- On Friday, April 4, 2025 a federal judge permanently blocked the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s widely contentious plan to cap funding for colleges' indirect research costs at 15 percent. The ruling followed three lawsuits filed by 22 states, numerous universities and several trade and healthcare advocacy associations.
- This 15 percent cap for indirect funding could potentially result in losses of millions of dollars for universities and slash employment for medical researchers. According to NIH, research institutions previously negotiated individual indirect cost rates at an average of 27 to 28 percent.
- On the same day as the ruling, NIH requested an expedited appeals process and formally filed appeals for all three cases on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the ruling, several organizations and research institutions announced a joint effort to develop a new indirect costs funding model.
- A nearly identical plan from the Energy Department to implement an indirect costs "rate cap" plan, which would have also resulted in cuts to federal research funding for universities, was blocked by a federal judge on Wednesday, April 16, 2025.
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