NEW YORK AP - The National Science Foundation can continue to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from researchers in several states until litigation aimed at restoring it plays out, a federal court ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge John Cronan in New York declined to force the NSF to restart payments immediately, while the case is still being decided, as requested by the sixteen Democrat-led states who brought the suit, including New York, Hawaii, California, Colorado and Connecticut.
In his ruling, Cronan said he would not grant the preliminary injunction in part because it may be that another court, the Court of Federal Claims, has jurisdiction over what is essentially a case about money. He also said the states failed to show that NSF's actions were counter to the agency's mandate.
The lawsuit filed in May alleges that the National Science Foundation's new grant-funding priorities as well as a cap on what's known as indirect research expenses "violate the law and jeopardize America's longstanding global leadership in STEM."
Another district court had already blocked the the cap on indirect costs - administrative expenses that allow research to get done like paying support staff and maintaining equipment. This injunction had been requested to restore funding to the grants that were cut.