Fed Judge Rules DOGE Illegally and “Blatantly” Used DEI Terms to Cut Grants

A federal judge ruled last week that millions of dollars in cuts made by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), a quasi-government entity led by billionaire Elon Musk, improperly targeted grants distributed by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) by targeting terminology relating to protected statuses.

The NEH cuts by DOGE staffers “blatantly used” race, gender, and other protections as part of their decision-making process, the ruling from U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon stated.

“There can be no serious dispute that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH’s ordinary grant-review process,” McMahon wrote in her decision that was published on Thursday.

In April 2025, NEH officials, acting on orders from DOGE, canceled hundreds of grants that had already been appropriated by Congress to be disbursed to various programs and projects. In May of that year, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association of America, and the Authors Guild sued the government over the cuts that affected their programs and many others like them.

Notably, DOGE staffers used ChatGPT and keyword searches with terms relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to determine which grant programs they would cut. Some of those terms included the words “history,” “culture,” “identity,” and more.

The cuts also targeted specific groups of people, McMahon recognized in her ruling, for no other apparent reason other than those people’s identities.

“Treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the oft-forgotten Asian American experience, the shameful treatment of the children of Native tribes, or the mere mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful,” McMahon said.

McMahon also noted the inexperience of the DOGE staffers who made the bulk of the cuts, who were in their 20s, stating that they “did not have much experience in anything at all — certainly not in anything remotely related to the humanities.”

Ruling in a combined decision involving two separate lawsuits, featuring nonprofit organizations as well as individuals affected by the cuts, McMahon said the actions by DOGE — affecting over 1,400 grants amounting to around $100 million — amounted to “irreparable injury” to the aggrieved parties.

McMahon detailed the injury in her decision, writing:

The injury…includes the disruption of protected expression, the interruption of ongoing research and publication, the cancellation or suspension of humanities programming, and the chilling effect caused by the government’s use of viewpoint-based and unauthorized criteria to terminate federal grants.

McMahon ultimately found that the cuts violated groups’ and individuals’ First Amendment speech rights, and their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection.

The cuts were so significant that they forced some organizations to shut down entirely. Much of the funding that was “saved” by DOGE ended up moving to other lofty projects endorsed by President Donald Trump, including his planned “National Garden of American Heroes.”

As part of her ruling, McMahon ordered the DOGE cuts to these programs to be rescinded.

Joy Connolly, the president of the American Council of Learned Societies, praised the ruling.

“The humanities are not a luxury,” Connolly said in a statement. “They are how a democracy understands itself. [Thursday’s] decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation — to seek the truth, know ourselves and build a better future on that knowledge.”